Making a Custom Corporate Award
Custom corporate award production is something CNCROi.com totally excels in because everything is done in-house. This means you get exactly what you want, from custom design to finished product.
As always, had a few extra off-cuts from a project we did recently in the shop so I decided to turn them into a demonstration piece to further show our customers what is possible using the variety of equipment and expertise we have at CNCROi.com.
We have more than a top of the line industrial Austrian laser, we have sand blasting facilities and a host of other equipment that I have yet to show in these blog posts and that includes our American made ShopBot with industrial spindle.
Using a custom bit, it quickly and precisely cuts out the shape of our custom corporate awards as per the design I established. This is more efficient than using hand tools, especially when it comes to making large volumes of custom awards.
Our roughing bit does a fantastic job, spinning at 12K RPM, this piece of cedar presents no issue even where knots are present.
This is why we are able to make an incredible variety of projects here specifically relating to custom corporate awards as any design is possible for CNCROi.com.
For this design specifically, I wanted a slight indent all around the custom corporate awards to give it a little more design visuals. It’s a very small thing but it adds a lot more depth and “feeling” to the completed custom corporate or sporting award.
As I was filming and photographing the creation of this custom corporate award out of cedar, I did it without the typical guards which is why you see all the saw dust built-up around the project.
It was either seeing what’s going on or a magical black box that moves around on top of the project until it was done.
This is why we can offer custom production of custom corporate or sporting awards in any size, shape, material or branding that you want.
You want this to be in the shape of your logo? No problem, no matter how complex your mix of materials and design are, CNCROi.com can do it!
What I really like about working with cedar is that it has a nice rich color scheme to it, pine is more uniform and white wood has a different grain pattern. For instance, here’s a video of our custom F16 award being made out of pine.
And here is a video of a custom Egyptian inspired bank being made out of white wood, each wood, like every material, has a + and – to it.
Back to this project, the board was quickly cut to shape based on a glass award I’ve seen FAR TOO MANY TIMES meeting with customers. I wanted to show people what is possible using our equipment for their use.
This may look a little rough but we have tons of sand paper and sanding equipment to make quick work of this piece of cedar being used for our custom corporate awards.
Now that the outer edges are nicely sanded down, we can now take a look at sanding the inner part to be just as clean.
And there you have it, a very sharp-looking custom corporate or sporting award, at least the custom cedar wood part. This is a thick slab by the way, an inch and a half or 40 mm!
The grain is beautiful, it adds a lot more visually stunning details and what’s even better is that if we made a production run of a hundred of these custom corporate awards , each would have their unique character as a result.
If you are curious about our custom downdraft sanding table used to turn this rough piece of wood into a smooth custom corporate or sporting award masterpiece, here’s how it was designed and made right here in CNCROi.com‘s shop!
Inlays, as this is a demonstration piece, I wanted to put in an inlay to show to customers additional options when it comes towards using CNCROi.com to make custom corporate or sporting awards.
In this case, it’s a piece of pine that will be layed into the cedar hole made with the CNC router. To provide additional contrast, it was laser cut to that it stood out a bit more from the cedar. If a customer wants it flush, that’s no problem either when it comes to custom corporate or sporting awards.
Each CNC machine has a + and minus to it, and the good thing is you don’t need to know this. We make custom day in and out at CNCROi.com, that means not only are we confident about our top of the line machine choices but also materials, woods to plastics, metals to laminates.
Once this “soon to be inlayed” part is CNC laser cut, it’s time to remove the protective masking, again, this could have been any shape, any size and itself could have had engraving of its own. Like I tell our customers, when it comes to CNCROi.com, we can go as crazy as your budget allows!
This piece of wood had a nice knot in the bottom part that I wanted as part of this design, some customers LOVE knots, some HATE knots and others are indifferent. This is an important conversation to have as we can augment our material selection to suit your custom corporate or sporting awards requirements.
Now you see why I wanted a knot in the bottom of the white wood, to go along with the knot present in the cedar in roughly the same place. There is a small channel in the bottom, this is just to give myself a little more give but this is completely a friction fit, there is no glue applied.
An absolutely PERFECT FIT, once CNC router, the other, CNC laser, the results are inlays that couldn’t be any more precise, which comes in handy across a wide variety of applications, from custom signage to custom corporate or sporting awards.
Now it’s time to make the custom offsets, sure we could buy these stock but they wouldn’t fit our screws (in this case) perfectly so it’s more efficient to make our own.
When it comes to inlays and offsets for wall plaques through custom corporate or sporting awards, they can be customized however you wish.
These offsets could have been any material and slight inlays themselves into this custom corporate award. You want custom offsets in the shape of a star in your “star award”, we can do that, even in contrasting colors or different materials!
Although this custom award only calls for three clear acrylic offsets, four were made, these are easy to lose and tough to see when they fall on the floor!
You can see that once these custom offsets are put into screws used to hold the front custom acrylic panel on this custom corporate award, how perfectly they fit.
This isn’t the kind of precision you can buy at the local lumber or hardware supply store!
It’s now time to reverse engrave and cut the custom front acrylic panel for this custom corporate award. In this case, it’s 1/4″ or 6 mm thick, rock solid and beautifully transparent with a flame polished edge.
The custom engraving on this acrylic plaque is done reversed so that the front, when put on the custom corporate award, is flush for easy cleaning and it looks neat when the light hits it as well. The results are almost identical to glass at a fraction of the cost and far safer.
As with other aspects of this custom corporate award, the font size, thickness and amount of words, including layout, are totally custom to your design specs.
The resolution we have with our industrial Austrian CNC laser is a thousand DPI, so essentially anything you want done, even in incredibly fine detail, is no problem.
If the design would have called for it, this custom corporate award could have had the laser engraving directly on the cedar, or on the edge or any other area of this custom award.
Due to the fact that CNCROi.com controls every aspect of this custom corporate award production, your design options are however you wish them to be.
Yes, acrylic (like wood) make some very decent fires in our machine but it’s totally safe, we have our machine hooked-up to an 80 gallon air compressor that dumps tons of air so that the flame is blown down and away from the sensitive parts of our Austrian CNC wide-format laser.
After the engraving is done and the inside part cut out, it’s time to cut the entire custom acrylic plaque from this piece of solid clear acrylic.
As with everything else, the results are perfect and can be customized further, for instance, if you are giving a hundred of these, each can have a unique design aspect, name or whatever else you want as a point of differentiation.
We can even laser engrave their face on the custom corporate award if you want!
The protective mask is left on both sides while CNC laser engraving and cutting this custom front acrylic panel just to make clean-up easier and prevent scratches from occurring on the acrylic itself while moving it around the shop.
The white you see in the photos is just a very thin layer of powdered acrylic that’s left over from the vaporizing of our Austrian CNC laser.
Taking off the “back” of the front custom acrylic panel that will make-up this custom corporate award, you can see how clearly the results were engraved. This is completely permanent by the way, it will not fade, crack or peel off over time.
Taking the other layer of protective mask (it’s on both sides), you can see how clear the text is and the amazing contrast it provides after being laser engraved.
The better the light in the room from the side, the more fraction and the brighter it seems on this custom corporate award.
Shifting it a bit in the light and you can see how the light plays with this refraction, the depth is also great for paint filling, so if I wanted this to be orange or any color, that’s easily do-able.
Comparing this result on acrylic to glass, you’d be hard pressed. For the thickness it does weight less compared to glass but it’s also a lot safer and the contrast is actually better. Compare that to real CNC laser engraved glass.
Now that the offsets are made, the back CNC routed wood are finished sanding and the front acrylic panel, it’s time to put it all together. Again, the options are endless as to show this is accomplished but this was designed for 3 screws to hold custom corporate or sporting award all together.
The results look great, again, every aspect of this custom corporate award can be modified in shape, form and function.
Don’t like knots in your wood? No problem, prefer variations in laminate or materials like metal such as stainless or anodized? No problem.
Every aspect of this custom corporate award can be modified to fit a specific desire or goal, whether esthetic, budgetary or size.
You want this to be 5 ft tall with a rotating inner wheel and LED lights shinning through everything from the bottom? Yep, we can do that too!
If you wanted more contrast on the acrylic engraving, going with a darker wood would solve that issues, as would paint filling the acrylic black.
There are lots of ways to accomplish something and that’s why using a trusted and experienced custom corporate award designer and fabricator comes into play.
You can see how awesome the flame polish looks on the acrylic but if you wanted the edge to be frosty, we can do that as well as additional ornamentation all the way around, even introducing a 3D texture to the wood is possible.
The screws we used to make this custom corporate award are nothing special but if you wanted them black, bronze or even completely hidden, we can do that as well.
This gives you a preview of what the custom corporate award would look like if we integrated custom LED lighting into it, this would require a base for the electronics and power cord or battery pack.
If you are curious about how we go about making custom LED options such as signage, watch this video.
And there you have it, all the endless options and possibilities when it comes to custom corporate awards designed, fabricated and shipped right to you from CNCROi.com!
One more parting shot, as for the weight, we can even create something that’s heavier or lighter by using a mix of different material options.
Looking for a custom corporate award? Contact CNCROi.com with your budget, volume, timeline, material and design preferences and we’ll design them just for you!
