Custom Plywood Signs: CNC Laser VS Router

Making custom plywood signs is a lot of fun, CNCROi.com can make them with both our CNC laser and our router.

As I often tell customers, there is no perfect way to make something, only the best way given your design and budget constraints and custom plywood signs is no different.

I’ve been using plywood for years, with both CNC routers and lasers, the plywood scraps from this job actually come from the job below for my tea light business, it’s great looking plywood!

Starting off with CNCROi.com‘s wide-format industrial CNC laser, we can achieve the same level of precision and repeatability as our CNC router when it comes to custom plywood signs but the laser can make sharp inner corners while the CNC router produces round ones, for big signs, this isn’t noticeable but for smaller ones, it is there.

This is due to the fact that our CNC router uses a spinning round bit, you can’t make a square using a round carver and with the laser, the beam diameter is infinitely small so everything is sharp inner corner wise.

When it comes to other items made using plywood, CNCROi.com has also made lamps for restaurants which provide a very unique and nice attraction at the same time.

The other advantage of our CNC laser is that the edges are burned when it comes to custom plywood signs, this creates contrast without needing to paint after the fact as we’d have to do if we made these signs using our CNC router.

But where the laser wins on some sides, it loses in others such as massive production runs, the CNC router is far more cost-effective a tool when it comes to larger custom plywood signs, the bigger the sign, the more the router wins out over the CNC laser.

What are some other items I made using plywood? That’s what I used for my famous tricycle year ago.

If you look at the surface of these custom plywood signs, you’ll also see some smoke settling along the edges, for TeaLightBox.com, that’s fine as our product has the same effect during production but if you don’t want this, then it needs to be masked, which adds additional cost as sanding plywood is never a good idea as you can quickly get through the veneer top coat and into the not as nice core materials.

But for very fine details such as this 3D tea light box stencil I made, this wouldn’t be half as good-looking if I used our amazing CNC router to make this, so as you see, there is no perfect machine or process, it’s just a question as to which CNCROi.com machine can do the job with the least amount of compromises.

Plywood is also great for other things than signage, including custom cake toppers and small trophies and awards.

Regardless of the CNC machine CNCROi.com uses, including the waterjet (not good for this application hence omitted), the results are very similar at a distance and the assembly process and the choice of stencil designs are almost identical.

When it comes to custom plywood signs, CNCROi.com can use just about any fonts or imagery but it really helps to have items held over by smaller bridges so that everything goes together as a solid unit rather than fiddle around with small parts for the insides of letters like p, b, e and so forth.

I’ve also made custom furniture using plywood which I still use to this day at the CNCROi.com shop, plywood is great for a lot of applications.

What I really enjoy about custom plywood signs is how relatively fast they can be to make and how strong they are compared to what CNCROi.com typically uses which is MDF but we can also make them out of stainless steel, Corian and Formica if you wish.

As for the color on the backing, CNCROi.com doesn’t do color, as such once the front part is made, just have us make a matching backing, with matching bolt or screw holes for easy alignment and spray paint it any color combination you desire!

CNCROi.com can make custom signs out of other material too, such as this solid wood.

For this project, the front facing part of the custom plywood signs was 1/4″ 6 mm regular plywood while the backing was 1/4″ 6 mm MDF as MDF paints wonderfully compared to plywood and is more cost-effective too.

I knew I’d be making another version of this shortly so for these custom plywood signs, I decided to just use what I had lying around in the scrap bin at CNCROi.com.

If you are looking for custom plywood signs, contact CNCROi.com right now!