Stainless Steel Christmas Tree Planter

Making a custom plasma cut stainless steel Christmas tree planter was great fun at CNCROi.com for our customer, originally the spec called for hot rolled mild steel but I ran short of the required size so I gave them a free upgrade to stainless whose size sheet I did have the enough surface area to cut this out with.

As this will be a planter for use indoors and out, stainless steel was a major upgrade, it’s far more corrosion resistant than mild steel and although the original plan of the customer was to paint this, my guess is that when they get this, they’ll just keep it as is or apply a brilliant clear coat… that’s what I’d do!

When it comes to plasma cutting at CNCROi.com, we got an awesome machine that make quick work of anything we throw on the bed, the machine is actually two parts, the first, is what you see, the actual CNC but the second is the torch, which we run with a PowerMax85 by Hypertherm, it’s able to cut through inch and a half metal, so this thin stock is NOTHING to it.

As I run a custom fabrication shop, I don’t know what projects I have coming-up so having the versatility of not just many different types of machines but also overpowered ones at that, means just about anything that needs fabrication can be done in the shop efficiently and precisely at CNCROi.com, including this stainless steel Christmas tree planter.

Stainless steel has a wide variety of useful purposes beyond just fabrication, my fire pit for instance has a custom stainless steel BBQ grill!

When we get our sheets of stainless steel from the supplier, generally they have a surface coating on them, as you see on this, which we then just angle grind away, this coating doesn’t really protect the steel like mill scale does on mild steel, it’s just more cost effective as it hasn’t been run through a finishing process.

The design for this decorative and elaborate stainless steel Christmas tree planter is still no problem for our machine, CNCROi.com has done some crazy tight tolerance work with our plasma cutter, I just had to be careful that the little pieces weren’t raised too high to have a torch collision.

It’s still amazing to me how simply creating a 3-phase electrical arc can cut through metal like it was butter, I’ve done so much work at CNCROi.com on stainless steel of various thicknesses by hand and using power tools that was an absolute pain, and then to see a machine so flawlessly and effortlessly do the same for me is mind blowing.

It’s incredible how versatile our processes can be, for instance, here’s a donkey we made out of stainless steel for an upcoming massive job that will be using these for a donation’s wall.

You can see that the power of the arc doesn’t stop at the sheet, it goes right into the table, luckily, the “cutting focus” is quickly dissipated with depth so cutting the stainless steel Christmas tree planter doesn’t mean cutting the same design through the floor at CNCROi.com as well.

I get lots of sparks cutting stainless steel compared to mild steel, they just fly all over the place, good thing I moved all my woodworking equipment into the front of the shop, having a wood pile next to a CNC flint isn’t a great idea, the welding equipment at CNCROi.com is happy next to the plasma cutter though.

This stainless steel Christmas tree planter could have been customized to any size, shape, details or even materials at CNCROi.com, don’t think because you see what you see here that isn’t the only variant we can produce at CNCROi.com, we are all about custom, whether you want one or a thousand Christmas tree planters, same material or all different, no problem at all for us!

You have to imagine plasma cutting isn’t actually cutting the metal, it’s more melting it, same idea like our laser, meaning there isn’t any contact between the machine and the material, it’s just highly focused energy that’s completing a circuit in this case and thus, melting whatever is in between.

Contrast that to our CNC router that’s got constant contact with the base material and is pushing and pulling though the material using a high speed bit, that’s why I often tell customers, plasma cutting is like using a 1/8″ laser beam, as that’s the rough thickness of the amount of material melted.

Could CNCROi.com have cut this stainless steel Christmas tree planter with the waterjet as well? Absolutely, but plasma is more cost effective and way faster… and I’d argue way more fun as well.

You’ll notice up to this point in the photos, the stainless steel Christmas tree planter cutting process has been all the inside parts, that’s to keep the entire sheet of stainless steel as one piece as long as possible, only once the inside parts of this design are cut can we then cut out the outside.

The nice thing about metal in general is the strength relative to size, no other material comes close to this and it paints incredibly well.

If we cut the outside part first followed by the inside parts, regardless of the machine in use, there would be that much less “hold” to keep the material in place, keep in mind, we are melting though this material, so there may be heating and warping issues that may present themselves if we did things in the reverse order that aren’t present if we do things the right way at CNCROi.com.

The finished stainless steel Christmas tree planter is looking great, there is an almost unnoticeable amount of dross on the edges of this steel, you can see the surface finish from the mill looks fine but we’ll be hitting it with the angle grinder shortly.

Here’s the stainless steel Christmas tree planter from a few different angles, as you can see, it plays with the light, that’s what makes stainless so great in an esthetic manner, it literally mirrors the room it’s in, looking great wherever it goes.

Now you can contrast the dull finish above from the angle ground version below of this stainless steel Christmas tree planter, it’s quite a difference and add so much more free complexity and detail to the work piece.

I really like my wildlife sign you see on the back wall of my shop, you can see how it was made here.

CNCROi.com can of course keep cleaning-up the surface of this stainless steel Christmas tree planter to create a mirror polished finish but generally, looking at it with the grain from the grinding gives it all the brilliance required for an amazing gift.

As you can see, change the angle, change the esthetics of this stainless steel Christmas tree planter quite dramatically, yes, we can achieve the same using mild steel, that Star Trek Bat’leth on the wall behind it isn’t stainless steel but mild steel, angle ground and polished, then clear coated so prevent rusting.

Here’s a close-up of the stainless steel Christmas tree planter.

The general rule I follow at the shop regarding custom metal fabrication is that if you plan on painting it, there is no point in going with more expensive stainless steel, mild steel is perfectly fine if you are creating a border between it and environment using a sealant.

Again, stainless steel is way better than mild steel regarding corrosion resistance, as a result, this customer got a heck of an upgrade, this material does cost a lot more but it’s worth it for certain applications.

Need custom and unique Christmas gifts? Contact CNCROi.com right now!