Custom Laser Engraved Plywood Signage “It always seems impossible until it’s done” by Nelson Mandela
CNCROi.com has lots of custom signage across a vast array of materials for various applications, today, we’ll do something simple on pine plywood.
We really enjoy making signage, the challenge is always getting the perfect material to fit the optimal application. Sometimes our customers have materials, sometimes we have to source it or can use material we keep in inventory.
The design options you have available to you are completely endless, so deciding upon a budget, materials and size are vital when it comes to making something custom to your spec in the custom signage department.
In this case, we’ll CNC laser engrave into pine plywood Nelson Mandela’s famous saying “It always seems impossible until its done.” The first step is masking the surface to make sure it doesn’t get too stained by all the resins and smoke unleashed by our Austrian CNC laser.
You can see in the photographs how much smoke is produced, there are two reasons for this. First, we are doing this out of focus slightly for darker results which means more material is vaporized per pass and secondly, we are going EXTRA DEEP.
Why are we going extra deep? Because I wanted to this custom pine sign a really nice sanding after and the deeper you go, the more play we have regarding sanding with final results looking all the better.
Looking at this custom pine sign from another angle, you can see the laser progressively plowing through this pine plywood, each pass revealing a little more of Nelson’s famous saying.
The quality we are achieving on this is totally repeatable, so it doesn’t matter if you wanted this done in another wood species such as cedar, maple or ash or even put into stone or other hard or soft materials. This custom sign would come out great each and every time!
What’s really nice about the precision we achieve on our top of the line industrial wide-format laser is that it allows us to do some really neat designs that would be impossible otherwise, such as interweaving text within imagery with a very thin border. You don’t have to have the quote sticking out to the side, but actually part of the imagery itself!
This camera angle gives you a better idea of the depth we are achieving on this custom pine sign, we can go deeper or lighter, it all depends on the process and application we are doing this for. Paint filling is also an option, so not only are we material and process agnostic, but also completely flexible on however you want the results to be.
The masking is doing a fantastic job by the way, sure, this board looks boring with a flat matte white color but that doesn’t matter, it’s protecting the wood surface so only a minimal amount of sanding will be required on this custom pine sign.
We can of course make signs of any size as well, so if you wanted this to be HUGE and the size of a typical table or as small as a key chain, we have the expertise and machinery to pull it off… whether you wanted one or thousands!
We are now approaching the end of this phase of custom pine signage production, the board was placed so that the natural knot in the top left corner would be just above his fist, it looked like a Sun so it fit perfectly with the message.
Here is the finished custom pine sign, the masking adhered wonderfully to the surface, the most important part was the center with his silhouette, it’s a very fine wall of wood there so sanding without breaking off would be a challenge if there was heavy smoke and resin damage there.
Taking a look back further, you can see the grain under the masking but also notice the grain following through from the engraving to solid custom pine sign board. That’s what is neat about lasers, they work in conjunction with the wood grain.
Taking the mask off, you can see how wonderfully the mask worked! There is almost no smoke adhesion to the surface of the custom pine sign.
Looking at it closer, you can also see how accurate our laser was on the outline around the text. There is no deviation there, the border thickness on the custom pine sign is the same across all letters going across his silhouette.
If you want to see where this wood came from, below is that it looked like before any sanding, just to show you how beautiful something can be made out of something that would generally be discarded.
Applying a few layers of acrylic seal to this custom pine sign and it’s done and ready to be hung onto the wall at the CNCROi.com shop.
Do you need some custom signage? Contact CNCROi.com and we’ll make something awesome just for you! Looking at the brochure below, we could have made the same design in acrylic, stainless steel, on stone, as a rubber stamp and endless other options.
