Horse Stall Sign: Custom Metal & Wood Signage

Making a custom horse stall sign using both metal and wood requires very different approaches regarding manufacturing and related processes than at first glimpse.

Luckily, CNCROi.com has the machines, experience and processes in place to handle even the most demanding custom fabrication jobs our customers come-up with.

With metal, there are a lot of different ways of cutting things out but for this application of a thin gauge horse stall sign made out of metal, the CNC waterjet was the best choice.

The process behind the production of this custom horse stall sign is very similar to another project CNCROi.com made for a Christmas Nativity Scene.

The products produced are repeatable, accurate and easily cleaned-up using the sand blaster which then provides the perfect surface for enamel paint adhesion.

CNCROi.com has made lots of custom signage using a variety of materials, polycarbonate though wood, acrylic through metal and Corian through rubber.

This custom horse stall sign will have a front layer out of thin metal and then a back layer out of Pine.

The metal is for durability and the Pine is for thickness and contrast but you can’t really cut Pine using a waterjet so CNCROi.com used our laser for that process while the metal was more efficiently produced using the CNC waterjet.

Of course, CNCROi.com can make custom signage using any type of wood and that includes thick slab work as well.

The name of the horse for the custom horse stall sign is Homer, now Homer will know where his house is out in the barn!

What’s really nice about the CNC waterjet is that when it comes to cutting metal, there are no heat affected zones which may warp thin metal such as this, if we did this using a laser, there may be some warping and the same goes with CNC plasma.

I really like how the CNC waterjet cut out the horse silhouette and the stencil of the horse’s name, everything looks great, nice and sharp!

If you prefer another type of design of something that’s more cost effective, we could have made a simpler concept behind the naming of a horse or humans.

But things rust quick when metal with oxygen and water come into play, that’s why CNCROi.com uses the sand blaster to remove all this surface contaminant along with the kerf at the bottom of the custom horse stall sign.

After sand blasting, you can see how the sign cleans-up wonderfully, the surface is now perfect for enameling!

If that table above looks familiar, it’s one I made using our welding machine as I teach myself the skills required to get more into custom metal fabrication here at CNCROi.com.

But first, we need to cut the Pine underlay which will provide both thickness to the horse stall sign and contrast against the bright silvery metal that the enamel will produce.

CNCROi.com‘s industrial Austrian wide-format laser has no problem cutting through this 18 mm or 3/4″ Pine that’s a off-cut from a customer project we did a while back.

At the bottom, there is a huge flame shooting down, our industrial laser is burning its way through the wood and as such, all that combustible material has to go somewhere and that’s through our vacuum table.

If you prefer something smaller for barn keys and other security items, CNCROi.com can make that just as easily using clear acrylic.

The front may look very clean but at you saw in the CNCROi.com video above this blog post for this custom horse stall sign, the bottom is a bit charred but it’s fine, it’s masked anyways.

CNCROi.com can cut literally anything, any shape, any size using any material thanks to the diversity of our equipment in the shop.

If you wanted a custom turtle stall sign, that’s just as easy to make as this custom horse stall sign, there really is no difference at the end of the day for us as all we do here at CNCROi.com is custom fabrication.

CNCROi.com can also make custom steel signage using a variety of finishes to suit whatever needs you may have for corporate branding.

Using multiple CNC machine types allows us to cut different materials optimally, but the precision that each offers is about the same, so making this mix and match custom horse stall sign is absolutely no problem for CNCROi.com.

I really like how this horse came out, both using the CNC waterjet and the CNC laser, they are essentially the same image though the machine used for them couldn’t be more different.

Just to compare the CNC waterjet metal that will be adhered to the CNC laser cut Pine below, you can see why I decided to burn the Pine, there is a lot more contrast needed for this signage.

If you wanted something more heavy duty, CNCROi.com can also produce a fiber etched solid 316 stainless steel custom horse stall sign!

After the protective masking is removed from the Pine, you can see how bright the Pine is relative to the sand blasted metal.

And putting one over the other, you can see that this sign does look good but it’s flat looking, this is why I decided to flame the surface of the Pine and enamel the metal front surface, to provide a lot more contrast and wow factor to this custom horse stall sign.

Flaming wood is pretty easy, just put a very hot flame and physics takes over making the contrast on the Pine, this is also a wonderful way to add contrast using natural wood grain.

Although only a small part of this horse stall sign will be seen through the metal, I decided to just flame the whole thing, so if water gets under the metal, it’s still not going to rot as it’s been converted to charcoal.

CNCROi.com can also be used to produce branded products for your winery and related businesses so if you had a special horse, we could laser engrave that horse with special branding all over wine bottles for you no problem.

CNCROi.com then did some enameling onto the CNC waterjet then sand blasted front part of the custom horse stall sign.

I drilled two holes that will be used to screw this into the barn door, there were a lot of places I could have put this but I wanted to make sure it went through the metal surface and not just the wood.

The holes can be easily painted silver along with the nails or screws no problem so they won’t be noticeable by the horse.

Want a custom horse stall sign or literally anything else made just for you? Contact CNCROi.com right now!