Custom Stainless Steel Memorial Plaque

Today we’ll see how CNCROi.com makes a custom stainless steel memorial plaque from sheet goods straight from the mill though to the permanent fiber laser etching.

The material we are using for this custom stainless steel memorial plaque is 304SS that’s 12 ga (2.8 mm or a little less than 1/8″) thick, we can of course cut a lot thicker at CNCROi.com and we can also work with other materials such as mild steel through titanium but this seems like the perfect mix of cost effectiveness and amazing results.

Plasma cutting the custom stainless steel memorial plaque is more cost effective than using the waterjet specifically for this project, the reason being, it’s FAST though the holes need to be done with our drill press after the fact due to their small size and high spec requirements.

With CNCROi.com, we believe in the synergies that come from having multiple machines, what this means is that we aren’t stuck trying to fit everything into only one specific machine, we have machine diversity and great tooling across the board, which means we can do in-house in a day what would typically take a week otherwise.

Although CNCROi.com can literally cut any shape out of metal, this custom stainless steel memorial plaque was rectangular, hence why this is what we cut out, the exciting part of this job is the etching anyways as far as results the customer will see when ever they visit their relatives.

CNCROi.com isn’t limited to making just memorial plaques by the way, we can use the same technology to make wall art and other unique items that will help you remember great moments and places in your life.

The sparks you see coming from the plasma cutting process is a mix of vaporized stainless steel and electrical sparks, remember, plasma cutting using electricity to generate the plasma and thus, grounding from the wand do the table, cutting whatever is between these to items.

Stainless steel is a wonderful material for memorial plaques, it’s highly corrosive resistant, looks great after being fiber etched and best of all, has a wonderful weight to it, meaning you feel the gravity of the item you are producing for the customer… it’s the small things but they are important.

Below you can see the perfectly square custom stainless steel memorial plaque that will now be further processed with manual hole drilling followed by fiber etching… and cleaning-up in-between.

Memorial plaques can be made at any size and any material spec you can think of, so you aren’t stuck to any given machine nor sizing or design spec, you tell us what you want, we make it!

I use to HATE drilling holes through stainless steel, it’s such a pain in the ass even with a good bit but since I got my DVR drill press, it’s been such a beautiful process that’s just so seamless with amazing results, it’s like moving from a hand saw to a skill saw.

Now that the holes are finished, the custom stainless steel memorial plaque is slowly coming to life, these were spec’ed by the customer in both size and location.

To make such precise holes, I made myself a polycarbonate jig – I hate having to rely on measurements when it comes to repeatability for various projects at CNCROi.com and this makes the results dummy proof.

CNCROi.com has been making custom memorial plaques across many different materials for YEARS, from live edge wood through to metal.

Now onto fiber laser etching the custom stainless steel memorial plaque, this is a permanent process, there is no paint, ink or black magic involved, the etching doesn’t come off, peel, crack or fade over time… a perfect process for such an application.

In all these photos and videos showcasing fiber laser etching, notice how you don’t actually see the beam but only the results, that’s because both our CO2 and fiber laser sources are completely transparent, even CNCROi.com turns all the light out, you still don’t see it.

When it comes to fiber etching, any vector imagery works fantastically, the results are sharp, precise and exactly to spec, which is important for this custom stainless steel memorial plaque application as you want it to be clearly legible for eons to come.

How does CNCROi.com cut through metal? Here’s a project that used the waterjet for comparison.

When it comes to font selection, literally anything works because we aren’t cutting through it (though CNCROi.com can if needed) so any mix of images and writing work with us as far as etching it onto any material you have in mind.

Although I really hate the reason for me having to make these amazing custom stainless steel memorial plaque because somebody had to die so I could make it, I really take my time to do as good a job as humanly possible at CNCROi.com to honor the person I’m making this for – these will be outdoors for CENTURIES to come and I want to make sure it looks as great out of my shop as it will far after the last human has lived on Earth.

There are no cutting corners to make such a high quality and crazy durable custom stainless steel memorial plaque, stainless steel instead of aluminium or mild steel for ultimate corrosion resistance, fiber etching instead of ink or dies or even ceramic bonding processes… this does cost more money but I think it’s well worth the investment.

If you look closely at these two images above and below, you’ll notice some black dust building-up as CNCROi.com‘s laser passes across the custom stainless steel memorial plaque, this is actual stainless steel dust that’s accumulating as we etch into the metal.

Yes, cats are also allowed to have a custom memorial plaque as well, in this case, it was made onto Pine for indoor use to hang on the wall.

Etching stainless steel is a harsh process, the metal gets both locally hot and the overall steel warms-up so it’s a fine balance between doing proper etching and not bending the plate to the point where it becomes unusable.

When it comes to making custom stainless steel memorial plaque, any design works fine, any material works fine any mix and match of ideas you may have we can work with you to turn your dreams into a physical reality.

The results look amazing on this custom stainless steel memorial plaque, what’s great about stainless steel is that it reflects the environment it’s place into, not a perfect mirror, but there is some slight reflectivity as you’ve seen in the video at the top of this blog post.

Need a custom stainless steel memorial plaque? Contact CNCROi.com right now!