Stainless Steel Donkey: Plasma Cut & Fiber Laser Etched

August 14, 2020 Jon Off CNC Laser, CNC Plasma, CNCROi.com News, Metal Products,

Let’s make a stainless steel donkey prototype at CNCROi.com for a job I’m hoping to get making many more of these awesomely durable donkeys.

Before we open-up this blog post, keep in mind that CNCROi.com has a variety of tooling and materials on-hand, meaning if you wanted an aluminium donkey, titanium donkey or even just mild steel donkey… no problem… but my shop could also make this donkey out of glass, bullet proof glass (polycarbonate), acrylic, wood (any species), cement and the list never ends really.

For this specific project making a stainless steel donkey using the plasma cutter was the best choice, it’s fast, it’s accurate and it produces a wonderful bevel kerf (my settings) on stainless steel to give this donkey extra visual appeal.

Another thing to note that although CNCROi.com is cutting a stainless steel donkey in this project prototype, we are not limited to donkeys, we can literally cut, etch and engrave anything onto anything at any size, shape or font styles you want.

When it comes to metal, CNCROi.com has a variety of equipment to cut it out, it all depends on the material and project specs as to which machine we use and why.

For this stainless steel donkey prototype, I wanted to test both a thick and thin gauge (thickness) of stainless steel, reason being, I wasn’t sure if this would have worked alright using a thinner steel, the results showed I was right and went with the thicker stuff.

Prototyping is an important aspect of the work I do at CNCROi.com, we do lots of stuff that was literally drawn-up by our customers and based on that, we have to make it happen in the real world, this means trying different materials and thicknesses sometimes to see what works best for the given application.

I also make useful items for use around the house, again, if you wanted a towel holder in the shape of a donkey, no problem, I just made something for my Son describing his favorite hobbies.

If the thinner stainless steel would have worked out, it would have represented a cost savings to our customer but it had two issues, the first, the plasma cutting process itself was bending the plate and in some spots, welding it to the table and secondly, with the laser, it may have caused additional distortions due to the thin gauge of it being more affected by heat generated by our laser at CNCROi.com during the etching process.

I know I write this each time I show pictures of our plasma cutting metal on these blogs but I just love the fire and flames that this machine produces – by far the most exciting machine in the shop, even our welder doesn’t produce this kind of fire.

Making custom metal props is a fun hobby of mine when I’m not having fun cutting customer projects, this Star Trek Bat’leth is by far my most favorite piece thus far.

I’ve manually drilled and cut stainless steel before, plasma cutting makes it look like butter to a flaming hot knife, it’s truly amazing seeing this power in action and being right next to it to enjoy the free fireworks and show.

CNCROi.com has laser sights on our CNC plasma, the reason is simple, I need to be able to position random things in random places for projects across sheets of different specs, and this is the most effective way to do so.

We aren’t limited to just metal, lamacoid signage, wooden signs… it never ends.

After plasma cutting the stainless steel donkey, and deciding on going with the thicker gauge, it was time to fiber laser etch it for a branding example.

Fiber laser branding of the stainless steel donkey is a PERMANENT process, it will not fade, crack or peel over time… EVER.

We are endlessly flexible when it comes to custom metal production, if you wanted a donkey themed BBQ grill, we can make that just as easily as this donkey.

CNCROi.com fiber etches a variety of steel components for custom jobs such as these in addition to industrial widgets and military or aerospace parts where weight and durability are a prime concern.

The fiber laser etching aspect of this stainless steel donkey is yet another unique process that doesn’t add anything to the material, we are just using highly powered energy to dig into the material and scratch it at a microscopic level, annealing it as well, causing the color change – there is NO INK involved.

The sparks are the instant vaporization and tempering of the stainless steel donkey, the sparks, though dramatically smaller and less interesting than their plasma cousins, are just the byproduct rather than the cause.

Regardless of what CNCROi.com cuts, mild steel, aluminium, stainless steel, the results are always unique to the process and where stainless requires polishing, mild needs paint and aluminium anodizing.

After fiber laser etching the plasma cut stainless steel donkey, it’s time to take a look at the results in various lighting conditions in the shop, below is right after the process so it needs to be cleaned-up a bit.