Custom Donor Recognition Wall

A custom donor recognition wall is easy for CNCROi.com because we make exactly what will get the most interest by your patrons, nothing boring and unrelated, all custom made to your specs.

For this specific project, the shape chosen for the custom donor recognition wall was donkeys and the material of choice was 304 stainless steel, it’s incredibly durable, looks fantastic and how may stainless steel donkeys have you seen hanging on a wall before?

The very first step towards making this custom donor recognition wall was to decide upon a shape, and design, this is where some prototyping was required and you can watch that process come to life in the video below.

Once that was decided upon and approved by the board, the next step was to go into full-on production, optimizing the design for efficient workflow.

The reason for the laser cut wooden jig was for accurate positioning of the donkey on the piece of scrap to make sure it was being cut in full and properly at CNCROi.com.

The weapon you see on the wall in the wide shots of this plasma cutting is my own Bat’leth which I cut out using quarter inch mild steel… it looks and feels fantastic!

After positioning was sorted and the design optimized, it was time to start cutting some 12 gauge 2.8 mm 1/8″ 304 stainless steel using our CNC plasma cutter.

The shape is an ackward one to cut so staggering was used multiple times during the production of the donkeys for this custom donor recognition wall in order to best use the material at hand.

As with all jobs at CNCROi.com, if I have some scrap of the same material, it’s first in line for cutting before going onto the fresh stuff, I prefer to throw away as little very good material as possible and the picture above showing the nesting proves just how difficult it is to optimize production and nesting on various pieces of stainless steel for this plasma cutting project.

You can see the anchor in the top part of this sheet of stainless steel, you can see that video below of the memorial that basically followed the same production process as these custom donor recognition wall donkeys.

This just shows you how many uses there are for any given material, one person’s memorial is another persons recognition and yet another person’s custom machine identification tag, keeping the material as one solid piece as long as possible is what saves money all around and limits the amount of waste leaving CNCROi.com.

Plasma cutters can be used to make a lot more than just donkeys, my personal favorite project so far is this wildlife scene.

I never get tired of CNC plasma cutting, it’s just such a violently beautiful process, it’s loud, it’s smoky and it makes a ton of sparks and fire… and it’s just the way I love to work in the shop, forging awesome custom jobs out of fire!

This custom donor recognition wall called for A LOT of donkeys, so you’ll see many of them cut during the video and in this blog post, this is a true production run, where one-offs become many-offs and so the production technique is different to account for the volume change.

When it comes to plasma cutting, CNCROi.com can handle metal material up to 2 inches thick… and yes, that sounds very heavy as well!

What’s the difference between fiber laser etching and annealing?

Although there are certainly sparks when plasma cutting other materials, when it comes to stainless steel, those sparks and fire are kicked up a knotch, which makes making these custom donor recognition wall donkeys all the more memorable and fun!

You can see how the sparks fly off in all directions but how clean the result is in the end, there is minimal dross thanks to our incredibly powerful 3-phase Hypertherm Powermax85 hooked-up to the machine.

You can see in the above image how well this matches the digital nesting performed, all of these stainless steel donkeys are ready for the next step of cleaning and fiber etching but first, we got a lot more donors and thus, donkeys to cut out!

Some really incredible art can be made using fiber laser etching once the steel is cut to size, we will be employing the same technology to these donkeys after they are cut.

I love it when I work at CNCROi.com and things go smoothly, in this case, the donkeys that make-up this custom donor recognition wall came right out, the cuts were all sharp and precise!

So I threw another sheet, this time a bigger one, onto the CNC plasma cutter and started making more awesome stainless steel donkeys for the customer’s custom donor recognition wall.

I keep forgetting to do this, but one day I’ll run a plasma cutting job with the lights off… it will probably be like watching a volcano erupting, keep in mind when I’m cutting this, I’m standing next to the machine in full welding gear with face mask and leathers due to the extreme UV radiation shooting out of this beast of a machine during production.

Having multiple tools able to cut metal means that CNCROi.com can create optimal results regardless of the design parameters you have.

CNC plasma production isn’t for the faint of heart and I love playing around with it for customers far and wide when metal is called for.

And another production run is finished of these awesome stainless steel donkeys for the custom donor recognition wall project, the tail “hole” was cut first and then the outline to make sure they were all identical but if you wanted different sizes or even animals, that’s no problem for CNCROi.com

Sometimes I debate what to do with this scrap, in this case, it’s too nice to recycle so I’m going to hang it up on the wall – this is shop modern art!

The next step, using the same jig is to make two holes into the stainless steel donkeys in order to allow the customer to easily screw these to their custom donor recognition wall.

Pots and pans can also be a wonderful idea for a custom donor recognition wall.

After drilling, it’s time to use the angle grinder to remove the burr on the underside and then sand both sides of these donkeys so that they become ready for the next step, fiber laser etching all the names for their custom donor recognition wall.

Like the previous jig I made for easy placement on my CNC plasma table of these donkeys, the fiber etching jig will be used for efficient permanent placement of the laser work, this means I don’t have to think of where to put these donkeys for them to be etched, it’s all brain-dead-programmed by me earlier for this custom donor recognition wall.

Now it’s just a matter of replacing the 1/8″ MDF with their stainless steel cousins, ironically, roughly the same thickness but different materials.

Fiber laser etching at CNCROi.com is incredibly precise, we regularly make industrial measures with them used out in the field by our customers.

Fiber laser etching of this stainless steel is a very slow and methodical process, so this jig takes away all the metal work for fast and efficient work, this etching will not peel, crack or fade over time – important for a fantastic custom donor recognition wall!

The fiber laser etching is done right onto the stainless steel, no ink or dyes are added, the laser just super heats the steel and “scratches it” in order to produce a different color, a dark brown to jet black.

The process is simply repeated over and over again until they are all done, it might look hard to read in the above photo but they just haven’t been cleaned or sealed yet, they will transform into beautiful in no time flat afterwards.

Yes, every custom donor recognition wall needs at least one anonymous donor! Contact us for your very own custom wall, any size, shape, design or material.