Custom Memorial Plate: 304 Stainless Steel Custom Cut & Annealed

CNCROi.com is capable of making a variety of both traditional and modern custom memorial plates, from stainless steel such as this one we’ll review today through to Corian, Wood and even Stone.

The overriding concern of our customers who want custom memorial plates are that it lasts a good long time in the elements, there are many materials that can accomplish this but the most popular for us is stainless steel.

About 95% of the stainless steel we use in the shop is 304, the reason is simple, the extra corrosion resistance of 316 is rarely needed and in raw material terms, 304 generally costs about 25% less without any real noticeable differences with 304.

Though we can etch and anneal stainless steel, the vast majority of them end-up being annealed.

I did a video a while back comparing the various options when it comes to etching and annealing stainless steel, well worth a review, but both are wicked overkill in my opinion which is fine for our customers!

Annealing a custom memorial plate is no different from doing the same for machine ID tags, welding tags and so forth, there is nothing added or removed by CNCROi.com which is why it lasts so long.

In fact, the annealing is so strong that the “non-annealed” areas will wear out before the off-black annealing simply due to the fact that the annealed stainless steel is now tempered and harder than the surrounding metal.

The advantage of annealing a custom memorial plate over deep etching is by far price, also visibility wise, annealing looks better at all angles and is sharper.

The reason for this is due to the fact that a sand blaster cleans out the etching and the laser itself isn’t in as sharp a focus as it goes deeper and deeper, so some resolution is lost along the edges.

CNCROi.com does lots of annealing and etching, that’s because we use our fiber laser tube, our Austrian wide-format industrial laser has both CO2 and fiber in it!

We use fiber to color change plastics and anneal or etch metal, the CO2 is used for cutting and engraving everything else.

As we are using highly focused heat, if we used a thin plate, you’d actually see the metal start to bend, this is why, in this case, we used an extra thick 304SS plate that’s actually 3 mm or eight inch or a gauge of 8.

CNCROi.com can of course go thicker or thinner depending on the application or even make this out of other material types.

The little lights you see coming off the plate is the instant heat and oxidation of the upper surface of the 304 stainless steel custom memorial plate annealing happening.

It takes just an instant but it’s a very slow process over such a large steel plate.

By the way, annealing isn’t only for flat items, we can also anneal round or oddly shaped items.

I hope to make a video of that in the future but until then, here’s a drill bit that’s been annealed.

And of course, we are also able to anneal business cards made of stainless steel.

So as you can see, there is a huge diversity of possibilities when it comes to making custom memorial plates out of a variety of materials.

If you wanted this same design in Corian, Wood or anything else, it would be very much possible and no, you don’t need to go with something rectangular either!

Here’s an extreme example of what we can do with Corian using paint filling, and this material is totally fine outdoors as well.

And if you wanted something a bit more dimensional in shape and size, look at what CNCROi.com did on the reverse of the above sample.

Now that this custom memorial plate is finished, it’s just a question of cleaning it up and getting it ready for shipping.

CNCROi.com works with a huge variety of budget ranges, that’s why it’s important that we know roughly what you are looking at spending wise so we can suggest the best option for you and your personal needs.

Need a custom memorial plate that’s any size, any shape made out of any material? Contact CNCROi.com right now!