Working with Wood: 5 Tips for Custom Laser Engraving
With laser engraving, we've helped countless customers turn new and salvaged wood into tangible art. From deeply personal projects to professional signs, our precision machine shop has laser engraved a wide range of designs.
However, not every piece of wood works well as a "blank canvas" for a laser engraving. Through years of trial and error (and one very small fire), we’ve learned how to ensure every customer’s laser engraving concept looks exactly as they imagined.
Creative, Custom Laser Engraving
Laser engraving is capable of incredible results.
For the owner of our local coffee stand, we laser engraved a block of lightly stained wood with a custom design that included her logo, a coffee cup, and a coffee bean. We applied a different stain to each design element so that, when the laser engraving was complete, the logo had a light tone, the cup a medium tone, and the coffee bean an almost-black tone. We loved the results, and so did the shop owner!
Another fun and surprising project was for Marky Mark himself. That’s right: Mark Wahlberg owns a summer home near our shop, and he came to Accurate CNC for a custom laser engraved sign to place on his private golf course. Along with enjoying this fun project, we loved working with our very kind, very talented celebrity neighbor!
5 Steps to Beautiful Laser Engravings
For creative, one-off laser engraving projects, most customers provide their own material. One customer, for example, asked us to laser engrave their cornhole game boards to use as an unconventional “guestbook” at an upcoming wedding—and we loved the idea!
There was only one problem. The customer’s thin, high-ply boards were already coated with a very dark stain and thick polyurethane, which didn’t provide adequate contrast to the equally dark marks made by the laser.
The lesson? Not all wood stains are conducive to laser engraving—and neither are all types of wood. To ensure you receive high-quality laser engraving, follow these laser engraving guidelines:
1. Start with a sample
Find out if your material makes the cut by requesting a sample of our laser engraving services. For around $40, our Idaho machine shop will laser engrave a 4”x4” section of your chosen wood, allowing you to see the results for yourself and decide whether to make any changes to the wood type, design file, or stain color before committing to the final project.
2. Consider the stain color
The laser engraves your design by burning it into the wood. Burned wood, of course, becomes darker, not lighter, in color. Therefore, if you want a highly visible, high-contrast design, you’ll want to avoid darker stains.
4. Choose the right design
Laser engraving is best suited to bold, clean designs. You’re unlikely to get good results from complex graphics, busy backgrounds, or pixelated photos. Request a sample to preview how your design will look as a laser engraving.
5. Select higher-density wood
Hard woods handle the burn of laser engraving very well. Softer woods, however, are prone to overburning, causing the wood to turn to charcoal with little warning.
6. Evaluate the wood’s thickness
Very thin wood sometimes disintegrates under the laser’s harsh beam, even at low powers. If your material is plywood, look at the thickness of the outside ply; that’s the layer that will be laser engraved, so it should be thick. High-ply, thin plywood contains a high ratio of “biscuits” compressed with glue, making it the least favorable material for laser engraving.
Ask for Laser Engraving at Accurate CNC
If you have an artistic vision for a custom laser engraving project that involves any type of wood, new or salvaged, talk to our precision machine shop team at the outset. We can provide a sample engraving on your material, help you identify an optimized design, and discuss stain selections, all to ultimately deliver a superior end result that looks great in your home or business.