Custom Retirement Gift: Acacia Hardwood Plaque
CNCROi.com makes a lot of custom retirement gifts, in this specific case, it was made out of Acacia hardwood which we laser engraved to form a wall plaque.
There is certainly a synergy that comes from having multiple CNC as well as traditional tooling in one shop, in this case, just using our table saw was more than adequate for this custom retirement gift but we could have shaped it to anything using our CNC router as well before the laser engraving process.
Table saws are wonderful tools, they quickly cut material down to the sizing I required to then put this custom retirement plaque into the laser to do the engraving.
When it comes to laser engraving a custom retirement gift, the design options are endless as long as it’s a clear black and white image or a vector image, that way you don’t end-up with jagged or muddy pictures.
In addition to endless image options, the fonts that CNCROi.com can use are just as endless when it comes to laser engraving as we aren’t going through the material, there is no need to worry about bridging loose parts like we’d have to contend with for stencils.
For this specific custom retirement gift, it was for a person working with the FAA so that’s why you see their logo on it, the hardwood Acacia is about an inch thick and the overall plaque is 12″ square.
Of course, if you want to just get some custom coasters made, literally any material works for us, that’s an option as well.
You’ll notice that CNCROi.com also performs multiple laser passes on this custom retirement gift, it’s to increase the contrast and the depth of the initial engraving, we’ve found that doing it this way over just one strong pass produces a better sharper result.
The first laser pass is to break the surface, the next one is to create depth and the third one is to create lots of charcoal, it’s the charcoal and not ink or dyes that creates the contrast, along with the shadows created from the depth.
Laser engraving is a fun process, the CNCROi.com always smells great after woodworking jobs so I really enjoy doing this types of jobs for customers across North America and the Caribbean.
Other types of retirement gifts we’ve made in the past include business card holders and other beautiful one-of-a-kind products.
It’s hard to see in the photographs but each pass does produce quite a bit of a difference in the laser engraving of the Acadia custom retirement gift, the bright light you see is the instant vaporization of the hardwood under the direct energy of the laser.
The process of laser engraving does produce effects that I didn’t want on this custom retirement gift, soot and smoke stains on the surface of the wall plaque.
The good thing about wood is that all these stains are easily removed using an orbital sander or even by using masking on the wood before the laser engraving process begins at CNCROi.com.
Of course, if metal is more your desire, CNCROi.com can also make custom retirement plaques using this material.
The repeatability of our CNC laser is within the nanometer range, which is why we can perform multiple passes at EXACTLY THE SAME SPOT with absolute precision and accuracy.
You can already begin to see the darkening being created by the laser, especially half way in the picture below, notice the border of darker with lighter right in the middle of the FAA plaque.
The reason you don’t see massive amounts of smoke in the laser is because CNCROi.com has powerful extraction systems which quickly suck it out both under the custom retirement gift and on the back of the machine platform.
Of course, I sometime retire models I designed and fabricated in my own shop to customers and friends when the time comes.
As this custom hardwood plaque comes to an end, the “hard work” is behind us, now it will just be a cleaning-up process at CNCROi.com to make this plaque go from great to awesome for our customer!
You can see the smoke on the top surface of this Acacia wooden plaque everywhere the laser did the engraving process, there is also a little overall on the entire surface of the plaque, it’s just so minor that you don’t notice it.
Regardless, the results look fantastic, notice how much of a transformation this Acacia retirement gift has done from the above picture to the one below.
After using our air compressor to blow out all the dust that builds-up in the laser engraved areas of this custom retirement gift, the next step is to apply tung oil on all the surfaces to protect and beautify the overall hardwood plaque.
Again, an amazing transformation from the naked hardwood Acacia above to the finished one below.
Need a custom wall plaque or retirement gift? Contact CNCROi.com right now!