At my local maker space (Cape Fear Makers Guild) we have a brand new 60W Omtech CO2 laser. I’ve been doing projects that I hope will inspire members on things that you can do with a laser machine.
I decided that the room housing the laser need a sign signifying that it was the Laser Room!
The base of the plaque was cut from 1/4" birch plywood and stained blue. Then sealed the wood with several coats of a clear spray.
I was planning to use keyhole hangers to mount the plaque so I did some deep engraves on the back to recess the hangers.
The round things in the corners are suppose to be faux rivets. I laser cut some round blanks from 1/4" plywood and then turned them into half sphere using my Dremel rotary tool as detailed in this post. Finished these with a clear spray.
The top layer was engraved and cut from 1/8" birch plywood that had been previously sealed with clear spray and masked.
I used spay paint to color the engravings so I first sealed the engraved areas with a generous coating of clear sealer. This will help prevent bleed when I spay the color.
After the clear coat had dried I masked off the laser beam part and sprayed the lettering with a flat black spray. When spaying the color I am keeping the can 6-7 inches from the work pieces and doing multiple light coats. This is done to also help prevent bleed.
I rotate the work piece 90deg between coats to ensure all areas of the engraving are reached.
I then wrapped masking around the lettering and sprayed the rest with a gloss red spay paint. Also sprayed the edges (note the back of the top layer was also masked prior to cutting so I didn’t have to worry about getting paint on the back and that interfering with the later glue up.)
After letting the paint dry overnight I removed all the masking. Glued everything together with some E6000 glue and some spring clamps.
With the deep recess for the keyhole hangers I didn’t have enough thickness to use screws to secure the hangers. So I used a 2 part epoxy glue
Love how it turned out,
To make hole placement easy for the mounting screws, I laser cut a cardboard template with the hole locations cut in the template. This made it easy to level the template and then mark the wall with a pencil through the holes.
