Fishing for Pine: CNC Laser Engraved & Cut Fish

Fishing for pine is a great way to catch an unlimited quota of laser engraved and cut fish, just something about using CNC equipment to make “nature” is a great break when doing big industrial production runs.

Although CNCROi.com could have cut fish using just about any material, what I like about pine is that its very light weight relative to its size, it isn’t a very dense wood but it has a very good strength and painting capability, and with lacquer, looks amazing!

Having a large Austrian industrial dual-sourced laser allows us to cut pieces that don’t fit in our machine as the length is too long.

CNCROi.com has used this capability to make massive signs for some of our customers, with pass-through capabilities, we feed big projects through our laser, to cut fish in this case.

As I wanted to keep the board from falling down onto the floor, I put some weights on the table end of the pine piece, as cutting holes through wood can lighten the wood where the laser cuts while making the other end a lot more heavy.

The first pass is done using our CO2 laser but at a low power and high-speed, meaning CNCROi.com was engraving the fish details into the pine rather than cut straight through it.

After the engraving pass is complete, the laser switches to a higher power and lower speed to cut through the 18 mm or 3/4″ thick pine.

CNC laser cut fish is fun but it requires lots of power and great precision so that the engravings match-up with the cut silhouettes.

This is why the lines are darker and wider when it comes to cut fish relative to engraving the CNC laser fish.

CNC laser cut fish is a lot of fun, they could have been all the same or totally different, our on-demand approach allows for total customization, design through branding.

Now that the laser cut fish are finished, it’s time to liberate them from the pine board.

It’s a pretty easy process, the laser cut fish just flop out when you raise the board, leaving the space they use to fill empty.

That was an amazing catch, now that we’ve cut the board to a size that fits fully into our Austrian CNC laser, we can now rotate it and use the rest of the board to cut even more awesome laser cut fish!

Of course, if you want your fish not burned along the edges and with some 3D perspectives, check-out what we did using our industrial Shopbot CNC router to make another style of fish, this time, a tuna!

There are lots of different options, even across a host of design and material options, to make something more suited to your corporate or personal needs.

This board is now double the original fishing of the laser cut fish, as such, production time is doubled as it takes 2x the engraving and 2x the cut time to create double the fish.

After the engraving, it’s time to CNC laser cut fish from the pine board, this is where everything really starts to come alive!

You can really see difference between the CNC laser engraving and the cut lines in these photos, more power means more vaporization with causes the line width to be wider.

If you wanted these CNC laser cut fish to be 12 feet tall or the size of your finger, there is no problem for CNCROi.com to produce them for you in unlimited quantities.

There is still a lot of friction in pine, even after the CNC laser cut fish is cut through and through, it still needs to be pushed out because of the thickness.

Here is one of the three fish designs we cut in this production run at CNCROi.com, below is what it looks like with the masking.

And after the masking was removed, you can see all the smoke and dust just came right off with the mask.

The back of the laser cut fish, you can see the huge advantage of masking as it transforms just by peeling away the mask.

And here is what it looks like after, a fraction of the time than sanding the entire surface.

Here’s another design, with masking on the laser cut fish.

And masking removed, you can see how the natural beauty of the wood starts to come out.

These fish aren’t going in a school, they are going into a box then to the customer!

Looking for custom signage or unique branding options?

Contact CNCROi.com!