Custom Wood Coins

November 27, 2019 Jon Off CNC Laser, CNCROi.com News, Wood Products,

Making custom wood coins is a straightforward process, how they are made and with what species or type of wood is where the creativity comes in.

You do need to keep in mind that if CNCROi.com is making your custom wood coins that there is some seasonality to the wood, meaning not all species are available throughout the year.

When it comes to MDF, it’s a wonderful material for this application, it’s both cost effective and incredibly consistent as it doesn’t contain any wood grain, it’s like the color beige, it’s universal in it’s look though this is also a drawback, it’s bland.

This blandness is actually good for laser engraving specifically as the contrast produce is consistent and engraving it is what makes it interesting.

As we aren’t working from a set template, you have lots of sizing and shape options and you can also mix and match this aspect of the custom wooden coins.

CNCROi.com makes a lot of custom projects using MDF, it’s an incredibly versatile material that’s fantastic for a wide variety of projects, it cuts really well do, producing a wonderful brown contrast.

Another drawback to custom MDF coins is that the edge doesn’t look all that interesting compared to solid real wood, you can see for yourself, in these photos but custom wood coins look better with grain on the edge than just burned.

CNCROi.com can also do wonderful V-carving into MDF which doesn’t really work well with real wood due to the material density changes in real vs man-made wood.

Custom wood coins can have anything laser engraved into them, one sided or both, but certain thicknesses must be observed as engraving INTO the wood on both sides does remove material.

With MDF, CNCROi.com doesn’t need to go as deep into the wood as we traditionally do with real wood, the contrast just comes about that much easier while with real wood, we use a mix of burned and shadows to create the contrast in the custom wood coin.

As for production quantities, literally anything goes, a few dozen to thousands, it’s totally up to you, though with real wood, there may be some minimums due to the amount of work to make them cost effective using a particular wood species.

When it comes to laser engraving MDF, we can also make very fine details, so if you want something sharp and small, it’s possible with MDF while not really possible with real wood.

Generally, turnaround is a few days from design approval from the customer for CNCROi.com to ship out the finished wooden coins, the smoke of course is free but we can also produce coins without any smoke though due to the additional sanding, the cost may be more.

When it comes to MDF, it’s certainly a material to seriously consider for wooden coins where cost and budget pressures exist, there is a lot more malleability as well, because we are working off processed man-made sheets rather than solid wood full of knots, different wood densities and other aspects that MDF don’t have.

For solid wood, the beauty comes in the grain, each custom wooden coin has it’s own grain pattern and unique engraving details, unlike the incredible consistency that exists with MDF or most other materials.

With MDF, your creative options are endless, go nuts and CNCROi.com will make it for you!

CNCROi.com has a full selection of live edge to cut to size and produce coins in varying thickness, that brings-up another point to consider, real solid wood does have some slight variance in thickness which doesn’t exist with other materials, plastics through MDF.

Whether we are laser engraving MDF for custom wooden coins or solid wood of varying species, the process is essentially the same.

This video above gives you an idea of the work involved with making custom wooden coins using REAL wood, it’s a whole process to break the material down to something usable for our CNC equipment.

As for the edge quality, you can see in the close-ups that the wood ends-up being burned, producing a nice brown color with varying colors that comes directly from the grain, again, this is the beauty that doesn’t exist with MDF or most other materials.

Producing custom wooden coins can also be different shapes, if you want your coins to be triangular, square or any other shape, that’s no problem and yes, you can also mix and match shapes and designs in one production run.

Although now shown there, CNCROi.com can also cut internal parts of the coin and do inlays, there are endless options when it comes to making custom wooden coins, the limitation generally comes-in from budget, timeline and species constraints.

Something to keep in mind with Oak, a lot of contrast comes from finishing it, but with coins, this isn’t possible as it would be removed by your fingers.