Small Custom Fire Rescue Marshal Plaques: Acacia (Part 3 of 3)

This is the third part of my small custom fire rescue marshal plaque series at CNCROi.com where we went from Poplar to Pine and decided upon Acacia to make this run of custom plaques.

Here’s the series thus far in video chronological order – oldest to newest.

Now that Acacia was decided upon for these small custom fire rescue marshal plaques, after the laminated board was purchased, it was time to shave off the finish on both sides at CNCROi.com so that we had a fresh new base to do the work upon.

The reason why the finish was removed was because these will be laser engraved, as such, to clean them up via sanding thus, it has to be removed anyways so I might as well be sanding clean prestine wood rather than sanding through a tough varnish THEN clean prestine wood.

Each material we use to make custom plaques from has their very own look and feel.

The router does quick work of the surface and right away, I begin cutting out the blanks for the small custom fire rescue marshal plaques that will then proceed to laser engraving at CNCROi.com.

There are two processes after the flatenning process, the first, is the inner indent into the plaques that adds a bit more detail to them followed by cutting them out from the laminated sheet of Acacia.

These small custom fire rescue marshal plaques are individually unique, they have different densities, textures and colors from the laminated Acacia, as such, no two plaques are the same.

The lamination of these small custom fire rescue marshal plaques is vertical, some clients like the wood grain going horizontally, others 45 degrees (either angle) but the nice thing is that CNCROi.com offers you that option as each plaque is essentially made on-demand.

Custom plaques can be customized however you require.

Laser engraving provides infinite branding options into the small custom fire rescue marshal plaques while the router provides infinite wood blank options on said plaques, so if you would have wanted them to be each different in design, including thickness profile, CNCROi.com can make that.

Below is an image of the simulation run of these small custom fire rescue marshal plaques onto a sheet that’s roughly 4 ft x 8 ft.

You can see the tightness of the nesting on the sheet of laminated Acacia wood, very little wood gets wasted during the production of these small custom fire rescue marshal plaques and whatever is left will be going into my brand new firepit!

Yep, CNCROi.com does sometimes make expensive fires in the backyard, now I can do it in style.

Any wood species you want, we can make a plaque out of it.

There is a little roughness here and there from the wood density variations on these small custom fire rescue marshal plaque blanks, as a result, they need to be cleaned-up via sanding both manual and power tooled at CNCROi.com.

The laser engraving is unique to each plaque, alignment is perfect from squaring the plaques in the laser machine before each production run.

Laser engraving produces smoke and charcoal which settles on the surface and inside the engraving of the wood, as such, the stuff that settles on the surface needs to be removed via sanding.

The nice thing about this is that it’s what creates automatic contrast for the laser engraving, making the details pop even more.

You can really see the amount of charcoal that builds-up in the image below, especially where the engraving is the most dense, where the logo is.

Plaques can be made out of any material, Corian to Stainless Steel and anything inbetween.

But once the surfaces of the small custom fire rescue marshal plaques are sanded, you can really see the advantage to this approach over UV printing or any ink / dye process as this will never peel, crack or fade over time.

After each and every plaque is sanded, again, using both power and manual sanders, across every surface yet again, it’s time to proceed towards finishing the surfaces of these small custom fire rescue marshal plaques.

The best way to describe the affect of finishing these plaques is that it basically gives them a shiny wet look, but it’s dry and protects it from the surface from the environment, thus, protecting them from warping over time and any stains that can accidentally fall onto them like coffee or whatever plaques get subjected to.

You can see how I made these custom offsets using my laser over at the video below.

The finished small custom fire rescue marshal plaques were covered with Tung Oil and look fantastic!

Need custom plaques? Contact CNCROi.com right now!