El Salvador Key Holder: Laser’ing Pine
Using 3/4″ laminated Pine, CNCROi.com made a custom El Salvador key holder which showcases the rivers and lakes found across that country.
I’ve made a lot of custom key holders through the years using a variety of materials, but the most cost-effective and flexible material when it comes to making these is Pine.
Pine is very cost-effective wood, relatively strong and provides amazing contrast from the laser engraving process, in addition, it’s very easy on the sander and other power tools CNCROi.com uses to finish this custom El Salvador key holder.
The map used for the custom El Salvador key holder is publicly available online, it was just a matter of converting it into a format that my CNC laser could use in order to fulfill this order for the customer’s gift requirements.
Trees, animals, text and anything else you can imagine work totally for for CNCROi.com to make your own custom key holder.
The purpose of laser engraving is to produce contrast on the relatively light in color Pine, there are no inks involved, so there is nothing that will fade, crack or peel over time.
The contrast you see on this custom El Salvador key holder is produced by charcoal of the material itself, it easily sands off when it settles on the surface of the wood, but we aren’t sanding the depth so that contrast stays there.
Mix graphics and text however you wish for the key holder of your dreams.
Literally any mix of images and text works fine with CNCROi.com when it comes to making custom key holders, it just happens to be the country of El Salvador and the font shown with text customized to the customer’s specifications.
For this custom El Salvador key holder, the process was relatively straight forward, find the wood, laser engrave then cut it out, sand and finish – the same process as used for many other key holders we’ve made using this material.
Although this Pine is 3/4″ thick, the laser has no problem cutting through it, we’ve cut far thicker and harder woods in the past as well as thinner and softer woods as well at CNCROi.com.
I really enjoy the flexibility that Pine offers when it comes to fabricating custom key holders.
As for the sizing limitations, there aren’t really any at CNCROi.com as we don’t just have a laser but also a full sheet CNC router (and plasma cutter), as a result, if you wanted a massive job completed by us, it’s no problem.
CNCROi.com can also produce tiled work, which means there are really no limit as to size or materials that we can make custom jobs for customers across North America, Europe and now South America.
As you can see, the laser is now cutting through the custom El Salvador key holder to liberate it from the 3/4″ Pine, two passes are used because there are sometimes very fine grain patterns that don’t get cut properly using just one laser cutting pass.
CNCROi.com doesn’t just make custom key holders, but key chains as well.
You can see the fire that’s produced in the picture below, it’s shooting down because there is compressed air coming from the heat of the laser, this is important because it turns a process that could be very dangerous into one that’s tremendously less a fire hazard.
After cutting out the custom El Salvador key holder from the 3/4″, you can see the amount of material vaporized in the process, it’s less than 1/16″ so it’s essentially nothing thanks to a very fine beam.
After lifting the Pine from the custom El Salvador key holder, you can see the finished results, this is laminated Pine so you can see the different “boards” glued together producing a slightly different grain result in the laser engraving.
Afterwards, it’s just a point of adding the rusty nails and the custom El Salvador key holder is now finished, ready for shipping to the customer!
Need a custom key chain or anything else custom fabricated for you, contact CNCROi.com right now!