White Number Sign: Plasma Cut Mild Steel
Plasma cutting a white number sign is something both useful and fun to make at CNCROi.com, we’ve done a lot of these using various grades of steel and gauges.
For this metal white number sign, the gauge I believe was 14 or 15 ga, so not your typical 12 ga that you see at CNCROi.com, the reason for that, is this was going to go internationally and weight was very important, even at that thinnest, it’s still incredibly durable for the application of hanging on a outside wall.
We have a lot of tools at our disposal at CNCROi.com but the plasma cutter is by far the most fun, followed closely by our new Thermwood CNC router… both machines are amazing to see and experience in action, doing jobs for customers across North America, the Caribbean and Europe.
As this is relatively thin mild steel and CNCROi.com is putting in a lot of cutting in a very small surface area, this may be prone to slight warping, as such, I used some weights around the white number sign to hold it down, just in case.
Of course, if metal isn’t your thing, CNCROi.com can make a custom house number sign using live edge lumber as well!
Sparks, fire, loud noises and immense heat all combine to cut this mild steel and produce a fantastic and unique white number sign that will adorn a house for decades!
There is a lot of smoke generated during the plasma cutting process because I didn’t get mine with a water table, the reason for that is pretty straight forward, I didn’t feel like cleaning all the parts due to water penetration, the smoke is exhausted so it isn’t a big deal.
The shop is in a bit of a transition during this white number sign production, I just got my Thermwood CNC router, a beast of a machine on its own, and I needed to make room for it by moving other equipment in and out of the shop, this delayed a few plasma cutting jobs but I was able to easily catch-up again because the machine I have cuts so fast through anything I put under it.
I’m not just a provider of custom metal house number signs, but I also made one for my own house!
It always blows my mind at how much fire is generated during the plasma cutting process, don’t look at the top surface of the, soon to be, white number sign, look underneath, and you’ll see the equivalent of a flame thrower… just awesome stuff!
Each machine at CNCROi.com has its nuances and plasma cutting is no different, its fast, its efficient and like all the other equipment I have, after you get over the initial learning curve, relatively easy to program for to produce fantastic results, including for this white number sign.
One thing I had to keep my eye on during the plasma cutting of the white number sign was the small parts that stood up, you can see the slots on my machine going across the table and sometimes, small parts “hang” on one side of the metal wall more than the other, and hence, flip upwards.
Corian and other solid surface materials also make for a wonderful custom house number sign.
My plasma cutter has a torch collision system built into it, but it will still drag the sheet until there enough force to activate it, the torch height collision system isn’t to “save” the material from being wasted, it’s to save the torch from being broken or damaged.
You can really see all the little parts standing up on the surface of the mild steel surface, they are all on the inside while the laser is cutting the outside of the white number sign, so they are safely out of the way for this project.
You can really start to see the smoke pouring out above the table now, during continuous cutting, there is a lot more generated than when smaller details are produced for the white number sign, so the extraction system doesn’t work as well, something I’ll improve upon at a later date at CNCROi.com.
Cedar and other hardwoods are a great option when it comes to unique house number signs for cottages and vacation homes.
Whether I’m cutting small items or big ones, the plasma cutter has been a fabulous addition to CNCROi.com, it has done jobs far and wide and continues to work on projects that there really are no other affordable alternatives, as the only real consumable used is 3-phase power.
Once the plasma cutting process of producing the white number sign is finished, you can see it more clearly, about 1/16″ of material was vaporized during the process wherever you see cuts, which in my book, is pretty darn good!
You can see the finished sign in the image below, everything that needs to be sharp is, as with rounded parts, a very nice white number sign after paint is applied to it at CNCROi.com before the customer brings it with them on a plane for the ultimate custom gift.
If I had used a water table, I would have had extensive clean-up to do on this, but because I “air cut” the white number sign, there isn’t much, just a little dross and sanding both sides before sending it into the paint booth to become white.
Need a custom house number sign? Contact CNCROi.com right now!