Custom Coaster Options: Pine & Stainless Steel

Your custom coaster options available by CNCROi.com are endless but today we’ll focus on stainless steel and Pine specifically.

Note that if you wanted square stainless steel coasters or round Pine ones or any other shape you can imagine… or different thicknesses or completely different materials, that’s no problem, that’s the flexibility that CNCROi.com offers our customers requesting custom coasters for their needs.

Using Pine as a custom coaster options, we used 3/4″ thick laminated Pine, it’s very durable (after sealing), cost-effective and produces a beautiful contrasting engraving that really showcases the uniqueness of the natural grain found in this softwood species.

Corian is a popular, but expensive material when it comes to just about anything, but it does add tremendous weight to coasters that involve multiple materials.

The nice thing about wood coasters is the incredible diversity of species available, from Oak and Maple to Sycamore and whatever else you have a budget for, including Mahogany!

You can really see the grain popping in these photos of the Pine being laser engraved, the reason for this following through in the engraving is because the laser is affected by material density, the denser the material, the more power required to achieve the same result where it’s less dense.

But keep in mind, the laser doesn’t adjust power based on material density, as a result, the grain gets accentuated during the laser engraving process, the same goes on for other custom coaster options involving wood but softwoods have more variance in density than hardwoods generally.

When it comes to custom coaster options, it’s important to realize that volumes and budgets are always a constraint, more than material or design, so getting those number down helps greatly to have what you want, when you want it, how you want it.

No masking was applied on these custom Pine coasters because sanding was going to be performed on it anyways so the extra step before production and after production wasn’t necessary.

CNCROi.com employs a variety of laser sources and systems in the shop, for these specific custom coaster options involving stainless steel, we use fiber etching with our galvo system, though we also have another fiber on our gantry system as well while for the Pine, we used our CO2 laser source for the engraving process.

This piece of Pine was a left-over from another job CNCROi.com performed earlier, very little goes to waste at our shop and so this Pine has had a lot of different uses and affected many lives across North America.

Mixing and matching materials is always a possibility with CNCROi.com when it comes to making custom coasters, there are endless permutations as to what’s possible at our company.

You’ll notice quite a bit of diversity in the finished results of these Pine coasters, so although each and every coaster is identical design wise, they are each unique thanks to the grain variations in this natural product, which is what makes it popular when it comes to custom coaster options.

After the laser engraving process is finished on this Pine, the next step is to laser cut them out… and this is why we can completely customize the coasters to suit just about any design you want in any quantity you wish.

CNCROi.com has made big and small production runs with wooden coasters, here’s a run we did using a variety of species from wood pallets as our source material.

Note that essentially, each one of these custom Pine coasters was made one at a time, so it’s absolutely possible for CNCROi.com to make batches of different designs at the same time for the same or different customers in one shot.

After the laser engraving process followed by sanding to clean-up the surface, the next step is to seal the surface to protect the wood from being “wet” which is a given considering the application these will be used for.

CNCROi.com seals all wood options when it comes to custom coaster options because it also increases the contrast of the engraving or etching involved, which adds to the aesthetics of the overall coaster.

The custom Pine coasters looked awesome, the next step was doing the same on round stainless steel which will also be permanently branded but using our fiber galvo laser rather than our gantry CO2 laser source at CNCROi.com.

Anodized aluminum adds color but keep in mind that the etching or color changes are always the same regardless of the colors involved.

As with wood species, your custom coaster options for metal are just as endless, from titanium to mild steel or anything else metal you can imagine.

Paint filling is a popular options but I’d suggest only for Corian or solid surface materials.

Also keep in mind that metal is dramatically stronger than wood, as such, we have a lot more options when it comes to cutting through the material to achieve the results you want as breaking apart metal isn’t as possible with metal as it is with just about any wood species.

You’ll notice that regardless of the custom coaster options chosen, the processes involved absolutely no inks or dyes, as such, there will be no fading, cracking or peeling overtime.

Although technically CNCROi.com can fiber etch right through the stainless steel coaster, for branding requirements and budget considerations, just a light etching to produce contrast was required for this specific project.

Curious what aluminum looks like after being fiber etched? Here’s the answer! Anodized is the better way to go for sure!

I do several passes on these custom stainless steel coasters do increase the darkening of the results, the reason to do things this way is because fiber etching is a very HOT process, especially when I’m covering almost the entire surface so it’s more prone to warping using HEAVY power in one shot than several light passes.

When it comes to your custom coaster options with metal, they are the same as they are with any other material, just about any design works fine, with the only limitation being options that involve cutting through the metal (or any other material), then we need to be concerned about support material to keep it all together as long as possible.

CNCROi.com has YEARS of custom fabrication experience, from design to processing large and small production runs, we’ve literally done just about anything onto anything you can imagine through the years.

For this specific project, CNCROi.com had a few jobs to do involving the same logo using different materials, so it was a good study as to what look like what involving the same design using different substrates.

If you are looking for custom coasters, contact CNCROi.com right now!