Custom Steel Musical Notes Sheet
CNCROi.com‘s custom steel musical notes sheet can be designed using any material or design parameters you can think about, in this case, it’s plasma cut and fiber laser etched onto stainless steel.
Our plasma cutter is able to cut up to two inches thick of metal, this custom steel musical notes sheet is 12 ga or 2.8 mm or less than 1/8″ thick so it flies through this.
Plasma cutting does a wonderful job of quickly and cost-effectively producing the blank that CNCROi.com needs in order to fiber etch the customer’s musical notes on, any design parameter works fine with us, oval, rectangular or the shape of a musical not itself.
Another process we use to cut our lyrics is waterjet cutting, it produces a very fine “beam” and as a result, we can cut out very fine details that aren’t possible at a small scale on the plasma cutting.
All the sparks and smoke you see flying across the plasma table in these photos and the video above are what’s left of the stainless steel that CNCROi.com is cutting, roughly 1/8″ of material is vaporized instantly.
You’ll notice a very bright light at the end of the plasma cutting torch, this is the arc that’s produced between the grounded table and the tip of the arc produced at the torch, whatever is between the torch and the table is what’s instantly vaporized, in this case, it’s the stainless steel from the custom steel musical notes sheet project we are cutting now.
The results look great, now it’s time to add holes in each corner, the holes are too small for the arc to do a good job of it, as a result, we use our DVR drill press to drill them out.
Fiber etching is the same process regardless of the process, just like the plasma cutting, the design can be anything, it’s just the project specs that are different.
Drilling holes through stainless steel is an absolute pleasure as I use to use a small desktop drill press that would literally bend when I put too much downward pressure onto the material below it.
The first step is putting some cutting fluid at the tip of the bit, this makes sure it doesn’t burn-up in the process of producing the small hole that I require in each corner of this custom steel musical notes sheet so that the customer can hang it on the wall.
Of course, cutting holes produces a burr on the backside, this needs to be angle ground off using an angle grinder with a flap disk.
Almost ALL our projects are done using fiber etching, not fiber annealing, you can see the difference in the video below.
The results are great, a totally flush hole, on the front and the back, which makes putting this custom steel musical notes sheet flat into our CNC laser easy as the focal distance will be the same across the entire project rather than raised corners if the burr was left there, plus it’s a cutting hazard.
Before producing the custom steel musical notes sheet with the fiber laser at CNCROi.com, it’s time to sand the entire surface of the stainless steel so that we have a nice clean surface to work from.
The results, comparing the top to the bottom, are like night and day – that’s why CNCROi.com does the sanding, a nice even result that looks fantastic in any environment it will be put in.
Time for the permanent fiber laser etching of this stainless steel blank that was plasma cut at CNCROi.com.
CNCROi.com can also mix and match between technologies, meaning we can waterjet cut and fiber etch.
The results of fiber laser etching is permanent, there are no inks or dyes used, as a result, nothing will fade, crack or peel over time off of the custom steel musical notes sheet.
The bright light that you see super-heats the stainless steel and tempers it, producing an etching or scoring mark, this is the contrast that you see produced in the final result, where there is no bright light, nothing is happening so no mark is produced on the custom steel musical notes sheet.
The resolution that CNCROi.com can achieve on metals of all types is fantastic with our CNC laser, even the smallest detail can be permanently etched onto the stainless steel.
I’ve fiber etched countless quantities of stainless steel at CNCROi.com, and through the years I’ve done this for personal and corporate use, the results still blow me away and I always find it an mesmerizing process.
If you are wondering how creative you can be with fiber etching, here’s an awesome samurai that CNCROi.com did a while back.
Whether it’s musical notes, text or graphics, it makes no difference, sharp vector images are what we need and the results speak for themselves.
Although this custom steel musical notes sheet is big, CNCROi.com has fiber etched dramatically larger projects that require us to open up the front and the back of the machine to feed them through.
Now that the permanent fiber etching is coming to a close, you can start to see what the results look like on the custom steel musical notes sheet before washing the surface of it from all the grit and metal particles than build-up on the surface.
The results of the fiber etching always look good right out of the machine but they are a little “blurry” from the steel particles that build-up around the fiber etched area on the custom steel musical notes sheet.
If you are looking to get a different type of wall art using metal, CNCROi.com can make that for you just as well.
From looking at the custom steel musical notes sheet from different angles, you can see how the color changes based on how it hits it, this of course produces a challenge when it comes to video and photographs for this project.
It’s important to clean the sheet up before final processing because otherwise, all this grit will be sealed on the surface, and it’s not just around the fiber etching but on it as well, blown around due to the compressed air shooting down during production.
What the sealing process does it not only seal the metal but also turn the fiber etched areas a more even look and a black result, while reducing finger prints on the non-fiber-etched areas.
Take a close-up look at the results on the custom steel musical notes sheet, they look fantastic!
Have some metal work to be done? Contact CNCROi.com and we’ll make it for you and ship it right to your door.