Custom Laser Engraved & Cut Laminated Plywood Shield
We just finished-up a big project that was cutting out elementary shapes and I needed to give my laser something different to do so I designed a CNCROi.com custom laminated shield!
What we’ll do today is review this project from start to finish using a piece of old plywood I had in these shop and a sample sheet of laminate I picked-up at a trade show months ago.
I sanded both sides of the plywood, they were both rough-looking at the picture above but after work on our custom downdraft table, they looked like they belonged in a museum instead of a fire pit!
The laminate is on the left and the piece of now, awesome looking plywood, on the right. If you are wondering where did such a cool downdraft table come from, watch the link below the picture.
As I’ve never worked with this laminate before – each is different and requires material testing like anything else at CCNCROi.com, I did some laser tests both engraving and cutting till I found a setting I was happy with.
After the material testing, it was time to apply double-sided tape onto the piece of newly sanded plywood, a sanded surface will provide more adhesion than a dirty one. The custom laminated shield is coming together finally!
Removing the double-sided tape showcases the beautiful plywood underneath which will never see the light of day, hence using old worn plywood! It’s amazing what can be done with scrap material in our shop!
Once the double-sided tape mask is removed, the piece of sample laminate is put onto it and voila, instant adhesion for the double layered custom laminated shield! We now have a solid backing with red/white laminate providing the color.
The next step is doing a bit more material testing – as I’m cutting through both the laminate and the plywood to take the shield out, I had to make sure I set our industrial Austrian CNC laser to the right settings. You can see those tests at the bottom left corner of the image below.
Now that everything is set, the custom laminated shield can now be finally engraved and then cut out of these materials! It’s going to look awesome!
You can see the little mini-nuclear explosion in the above image, laminate is plastic and when it’s hit with the laser, vapor is released from the vaporization process which is then ignited to make fire! Yes, CNCROi.com makes fires all day, just in a very controlled fashion.
As this custom laminated shield is tested with fire, it begins to take shape, the engraving is done first to make sure that even if something moves after it has been cut, it makes no difference as it’s the final step to the finished product.
Just for fun, I made an animated gif to show you how the laser works in a bit more detail than you see in the video at the top of this blog post. The laser head moves incredibly fast but you can see all the mini explosions occurring across the surface of the custom laminated shield. Trial by fire!
Luckily, we have the world’s best CNC laser engraver hooked-up to a powerful air compressor AND gas kit AND extraction system. In a typical laser, this would be scary stuff but we invested in the proper auxiliary equipment to do things that most shops wouldn’t touch.
Laminate is an interesting material to work with, it’s available in endless color combinations and in some applications preferable to paint filling or stencil use. The challenge with laminates is making sure that what happens on the laser bed stays on the laser bed and doesn’t spread across the shop.
The engraving of this custom laminated shield is just about done, all that’s left to do is laser engrave our logo and the updated heading I’ve added to it and all future marketing we do here at CNCROi.com. I’ve spent the past week not releasing blog posts because I’ve been focused on bringing the website up to date and recalibrating our capabilities with all the new equipment coming into the shop.
When you read about small desktop lasers, keep in mind that their capabilities are incredibly limited, not only are the incapable of doing things on the straight and narrow, they also don’t have the physical vertical clearance capabilities that our industrial CNC laser has much less the power to cut through multiple layers of material in one pass.
If you were to measure the thickness variance of the small inner lines throughout the bull, you’d notice that we are within five nanometers (yes, NANO) of where the laser had to be. This means our work is accurate and done in absolute safety of both the machine and operator considering how powerful our dual-sourced laser is.
It’s finally time to cut both the laminate and plywood with double-sided tape in one pass to let the custom laminated shield come out of these binds!
The reason why the flame is shooting out at such a strong angle is due to the extraction system mixed-in with the compressed air and gas kit we have on our Austrian CNC laser.
Adding the slight white border on the custom laminated shield really makes it pop, giving it a bit more contrast, regardless of what background this is put on, there is also a slight 1 mm gap all around on purpose.
Looking at the finished piece, this custom laminated shield looks like it belongs on an exotic car or museum but instead, it will go somewhere on the wall in the shop.
Looking at it closely, you can see how accurate and fine the details are, everything is sharp, the corners are dead-on and everything looked perfect, and this is even BEFORE any clean-up was done on the custom laminated shield.
Looking for something awesome for your business? Custom corporate awards through to laminated signage and custom furniture, you’ve found CNCROi.com. Contact us right now!
