Custom Sporting Award Engraving (How-To)

In this blog post, CNCROi.com will make a very simple yet effective custom sporting award using just plywood and a design. We’ll focus on custom sporting award engraving, a sort of how-to.

I wanted to make something that was an absolute contrast to two other custom sporting award engraving I’ve demonstrated here so you can’t go any simpler than one sheet of plywood compared the the inlays and multiple materials used for the two custom awards you see below.

We recently did some temporary signage out of some flooring plywood (one side looks great, other side, not so much) and I thought it has the perfect surface to make today’s custom sporting award. We can make custom sporting award engraving onto just about any medium, stainless steel through Corian and lamacoids.

This project was entirely made with our industrial Austrian wide-format CNC laser, engraving through cutting, which means the surface needs to be masked as plywood is very hard to sand (without people noticing it was sanded).

Once the design was settled upon it was time to begin engraving this custom sporting award into shape. The engraving is done first to keep everything together as long as possible before it’s time to be CNC laser cut. Cutting may move the work piece while engraving does not.

The engraving process introduces contrast to the custom sporting award by vaporizing the first layer of plywood AND darkening the wood underneath. This means there is no requirement for paint filling the completed award as everything is clearly legible, which reduces production costs substantially.

Taking a closer look at the custom sporting award engraving process, you can see how accurate everything is. Our machine is accurate with five nanometers, which is overkill for awards but just perfect for some of our manufacturing and industrial clients.

Keep in mind that all the smoke stains you see around the engraving and soon cutting, are all deposited ON the mask, not the plywood, which makes clean-up a breeze! The amount of smoke and resin is always more engraving that cutting, as it can’t go “under” the custom sporting award, it stays up top as we aren’t going right through.

What’s really nice is that our process is completely scale independent, which means this award can be the size of a coaster or the size of a person and it would be just as clear and legible either way. That’s the accuracy and precision that our customers have come accustom to by CNCROi.com.

Now that the custom sporting award engraving is almost done the engraving pass, it will be time to begin cutting out the stencil I put inside followed by the outer outline of the entire award.

Cutting through and adding layers to custom awards is a great way to add detail without resorting to too many costs. There are a lot of things that go into a custom design, from material selection to tool use and that’s why it’s vital we know your price point to begin with so we can make a design according to your budget.

Everything at CNCROi.com is made in-house, so bringing in plywood and taking out custom awards is how we do things. We’ve also designed things that don’t require any screws or glue for that matter. The options with us are infinite.

Having top of the line equipment with internal custom design and sourcing capabilities makes CNCROi.com production incredibly streamlined and cost effective for our customers across a wide range of applications.

After the internal cuts are made to this plywood custom sporting award, it’s time to cut out the entire outline. This process can be as extensive or straight forward as you want, it all depends on the design and materials involved. There is always some variation depending on the process but the details of which, you don’t need to worry about, that’s what you pay us the big bucks for!

For instance, we also have an industrial CNC router that can work with thicker or other materials as well, such as what we used to make this custom cedar award demo.

The outline can be absolutely anything as well, done with either equipment, that’s how we made this custom F16 inspired award. There are so many tricks and how to tips that go into even the simplest custom sporting award engraving.

Now that the custom sporting award is just about cut out, you can see all the smoke on the surface of the mask, it’s right where we want it to be, on the mask, not the difficult to sand plywood underneath. And yes, if you already have an award done, we can also make the lamacoid or other material tag for it out of any material.

The custom sporting award is now complete, a quick review is all that’s needed to make sure everything was cut properly and to spec. Our work is generally done within 24 hours, so lead time after the design issues are sorted and payment is done, can be in your hands generally within a week (shipping depending).

Keep in mind that CNCROi.com can work across a huge variety of project scales both in unit volume and physical space, for instance, our laser is controlled by a laptop sitting on a custom designed and cut (by the laser) CNC laser station.

Here are just a few more pictures of this custom sporting award with the mask left on just so you can see how much smoke and debris is now stuck to it from a simple cutting.

This is 1/4″ plywood, so nothing spectacular and lots of material defects, hence cheap price, but it did a wonderful job on this custom sporting award that’s engraved to perfection! Cutting is easy, it’s engraving that’s the toughest as you are displaying material imperfections under the perfected surface.

Now that the protective mask is removed, you can see how awesome the laser did it’s job on this flooring plywood. Masking isn’t always perfect and for some applications, not even required.

The stencil cut perfectly and sharply, the outline of the text and overall award came out great. The stencil is easy to be made at any size and font and style, these are issues we sort out with our internal design capabilities.

What I really like about our industrial CNC laser is that it automatically adds a dark outline (due to wood burning / cutting) which makes lighter woods really pop due to the contrast.

If you are looking for a passionate company that loves to make awesome designs or if you are a graphic designer who needs to bring your art into the real world, contact CNCROi.com right now!