Custom Outdoor Signage: MDF Blanks
Custom outdoor signage can be made by CNCROi.com using a variety of materials, stone to stainless steel, live edge wood to Corian.
There are a few things to keep in mind with custom outdoor signage, the biggest thing is that it must be weatherproof – as happy in hot summer days as the coldest winter ones and still be utilitarian and in solid condition though the years.
As a result, you may think that MDF is an AWFUL material for custom outdoor signage, it doubles in size and halves in value as soon as it gets wet, and there you have your solution, it needs to be thoroughly sealed from the elements.
Having multiple CNC machines allows CNCROi.com to produce jobs efficiently from start to finish using optimized equipment that gets the job done right the first time.
Of course, CNCROi.com can also make dimensional signage at our shop too.
For this specific custom outdoor signage, CNCROi.com had to cut out two shapes out of half inch MDF, an oval and a rectangle where the oval was to be the business name and the rectangle to indicate if they were open or not.
As you can see from the above picture, CNCROi.com can produce amazingly HUGE custom outdoor signage no problem spanning many ft in size and square footage that can be seen easily from great distances.
So the first step was cutting out custom shapes to spec and the next step is going to be laser engraving logos and wording onto these custom shapes at CNCROi.com.
As the person who is receiving these two custom outdoor signs will be the one painting them, and possibly paint filling them as well for additional contrast, I decided to save them a lot of sanding and headaches to apply a protective masking over both sides that will be engraved at the shop.
Live edge signage for cottages is one of my most favorite to make, other than steel, it looks great, the customization is incredible and the customer can refinish it every few years no problem.
Quite often, I debate adding masking on surfaces or not when it comes to signage, it’s very much dependent on what I’m carving out but if I’m going to hand this to the customer who will finish them off, I generally apply masking because rarely do they have the equipment that I have in the shop that makes it a marginal difference in work.
The entire goal for the custom outdoor signage of OPEN is to create depth, they may or may not paint fill but the customer will for sure be painting the surface with a roller, and hence, if there isn’t enough depth in the laser engraving, they may inadvertently start painting the engraving which would kill the contrast.
With CNCROi.com, you can literally have any font size, type of mix thereof in your custom outdoor signage, you aren’t locked into a limited font set when it comes to customizing your sign needs.
Lamacoids are a good choice if you need colorful outdoor signage for a few years, it isn’t as durable as steel or other materials CNCROi.com works with but it’s alright for many applications as it’s so cost-effective.
The depth on this is roughly 1/8″, the dust on the surface isn’t a big deal, it comes right off – I sprayed it off with air before shipping – so now the customer has the choice, to paint fill or not, totally up to them.
The reason I didn’t use my CNC router to carve this out and then cut out the shapes is simple, the sharpness of the font would have been lost and the bit I’d have to use would be so fine, it would just break under the stress, this custom outdoor signage is using the best the CNC router has to offer with the augmentation only possible using our CNC laser.
Next step is the laser engraving of the oval that I just CNC routed out of a sheet of MDF, I just love the flexibility this approach towards custom outdoor signage offers our customers, the material can be anything because of the multiple machines we employ to make what our customers want… it’s so liberating creatively.
The oval is a little tricky though, trying to get it perfectly straight isn’t the easiest so I decided to make a laser cut jig to place it into, it meant my brain didn’t have to do anything to line things up properly for this engraving on both sides.
A popular material for custom outdoor signage is metal, we can cut everything from granite and concrete to steel and the thickest of woods.
Like the OPEN sign I made earlier at CNCROi.com, this will also be laser engraved on both sides, so having them both along the same plane is important, hence the jig made lining this up piece of cake.
The reason for laser engraving this oval custom outdoor signage instead of carving was different, the font would have looked great using a carving bit but those Oak leaves wouldn’t of, hence this was yet again a laser job, I could have mix and matched processes but at the end of the day for consistency, I just laser’ed everything at CNCROi.com.
The finished custom outdoor signage looks fantastic, I’m so happy with how it came out and can’t wait to jump on the next one for our customers!
Need custom outdoor signage? Any shape, material, size or design, contact CNCROi.com right now!