Custom Welcome Sign: Laser Engraved Walnut Signage
Having a custom welcome sign made by CNCROi.com should be part of every home, any size, any shape, any material are your design limitations when it comes to what we can make for you.
For the specific custom welcome sign I’m making for my home entrance, I used a slab of live edge Walnut which I then cut to rough size then laser engraved followed by cutting it to my spec.
As I live in a multilingual home, with quite a diverse crowd of visitors, I wanted to have a sign that reflected that yet at the same time, showed when my family moved into our current home.
If you are wondering why Chinese specifically, I lived there for two years, among many other places in Asia, before started down the road that ended-up with me founding CNCROi.com over four years ago.
It was a fun time and the most fun video I produced was the above that went well with my passion for the cosmos among many other things.
I’ve been designing things for several decades, it’s fun to come-up with new and innovative concepts and testing them out in the real world.
Especially through 2018, I grew quite fond of using live edge wood and planks when ever I can, there is just something so wonderful about having the capability of producing really amazing work straight from the log (or slice thereof) that I don’t quite the same feeling for using store-bought lumber.
Using CNCROi.com‘s industrial wide-format Austrian CNC laser allows us to produce incredibly sharp results across a host of materials including wood, so everything is sharp and precise regardless of the imagery or language we use.
One of the fun parts about working with live edge is actually just leveling it out, it’s something I really enjoy doing!
Unlimited font and image options means CNCROi.com can produce a custom welcome sign that totally suits your hobbies, lifestyle or anything else you want people to know about you before they even enter your home.
When it comes to a custom welcome sign, you aren’t limited to just Walnut, you prefer Ash, Pine, Oak or whatever other species you want, even using old pallet wood is fine too with us.
One of the bigger house number signs I’ve made at CNCROi.com to date was this amazing piece of Cherry which I carved out and paint filled instead of laser engraved.
The bright light you see on my custom welcome sign comes from the instant vaporization of the Walnut, there is nothing else going on in there, just an instant solid to gas conversion very similar to what you’d get with a magnifying lens but with a bit more power and precision.
As for the darkening you see after our CNC laser hit the spot we told it to, that’s charcoal, there is no paint use anywhere on this sign other than a final coat of varnish when it was sanded to accentuate the grain.
One of the items I plan on adding to my home very soon is a custom house number sign, there are always some new ideas to accentuate a home and that’s definitely at the top of my life.
After the inside lettering of my custom welcome sign was laser engraved, I did a pass of V-channel carving and then a straight line going to all four corners which I’d use to cut the signage to the right dimension.
This custom welcome sign that I designed is already looking amazing, I did consider not sanding it at all but I wanted everything to be very sharp on my house entrance and thus, decided to sand off the smoke stains going around the engraved areas of the Walnut signage.
CNCROi.com can also carve out wood if you wish, so if you prefer to have something that’s multi-layered that’s no problem for us using a variety of equipment and production techniques.
But before going ahead with sanding, I decided to give my custom welcome sign a few more passes with the laser in order to darken the engraving and provide me with a bit more depth.
The contrast on a wooden sign (and most other materials) is created by two factors, in this case it’s charcoal AND depth, you see, depth creates shadows which will make the engraving I make even darker and make the charcoal even darker as a result.
It’s hard to properly photograph this sign before and after but you can see it went a few shades into the darker zone and then I was happy with my custom welcome sign.
If you are more into metal, don’t worry, CNCROi.com can make you a custom welcome sign using any grade and thickness of metal you have the budget for.
Looking at the Walnut that’s been laser engraved closer-up, you can really see how the grain follows through the engraving and the 3D effect of the letters I achieved as well, again, hard to see this in photographs but this really shines literally when it’s varnished.
The first step towards finishing my custom welcome sign is to sand it, getting all the resin and smoke off the surface of the sign is pretty quick when there is relatively little engraved into it.
Now you can directly compare and personally for me, I prefer the look of clean edges and lettering over the smoky results above for my custom welcome sign.
Regardless of the wood species you wish CNCROi.com to use (or other materials), the quality of the output is always spectacular, I was greatly inspired for my sign from a workshop sign we made just a few months ago using Poplar.
Next-up is cutting off all the scrap which will find a new home in the fire pit at my new home.
My custom welcome sign is just about done, it’s cut to size and surface sanded but I wanted to clean-up the edges afterwards.
CNCROi.com can make a very large variety of custom woodwork for use across the house, something I plan on making throughout the year for my own home.
My amazing little belt sander does a great job of cleaning-up the blade marks on the custom welcome sign, this is probably the most used tool that I have in the shop and it has always produced great results for my clients.
Next step was putting on a VERY THICK layer of varnish, you can see the before and after look comparing the above to the below picture, the varnish was put extra thick so that it seeped into the engraving and the color and grain pattern really pops too!
After drying and a few passes with a sander to clean-up the surface a bit, my finished custom welcome sign is ready for the home.
Want a custom welcome sign? Contact CNCROi.com right now!