Building Signs
Instruction
In a previous project I explored the process of tiling to create letters for signs larger than the laser. In that project I only made the letters and sent them to a customer. In this project we will look at the full process for creating a sign.
Since the project will be a sign larger than the laser itself, I will need to create the lettering in sections. Also this means we will need a large board as the backing for the sign.
For the backing, I created a panel of Ash boards that measures 31 inches by 16.5 inches. The thickness is a little proud of half an inch. I won't get into the details, but the backing was constructed from lumber harvested locally. I milled the boards down and glued them together.
If you don't have access to wood working tools, you could purchase a panel like this from a local woodworker, or go for a rustic look and get some pine tongue and groove boards and glue them together.
I sanded down the panel and finished it with just clear polyurethane.
On this project, I am trying to have fewer seems in the text. I decided that I could break up the words by some of the natural breaks rather than splitting up the letters. I also was able to squeeze in different elements of the design such as the dates and the “est.”
Keep in mind, that these parts will all be positioned by hand after being cut out, so it doesn't matter how they are positioned at this point. Just try to fit as much as you can on a single piece of material.
As i mentioned before, I had a goal of trying to eliminate all seams in the design. In creating the second cut out, I moved part of the text to a new canvas and used the rotate feature to position the text diagonally so that it all fit on one panel of material. I was also able to squeeze in a few more parts.
all processing was the cut setting. I ran the laser at 3mm/s at 100% power. This yielded clean cuts.
One thing to watch out for is that on the first tab you will find that each letter is a separate vector. If you run this as is, it will cut out each stroke and will cause some odd overlaps. I caught this early on and used the combine tool to unite all vectors into one solid vector. Of course, this only applies to overlapping text that looks like a continuous stroke of the pen. This was a result of the project file being opened on a different computer that did not have the font used in the original design. When you do this XCS will convert the font to vectors, which is a great way to handle this situation, just be mindful of the issue if your font connects like this one.
Now that we have everything set up, let's cut out the design. Be sure to always follow the rules that come with your laser. Always wear personal protective equipment when the laser is in operation.
For this project, I thought it would be good to add some contrast with the letters by painting them white.
Finally, place the cutout letters on a sheet of cardboard to be painted. I have found that a coat of white paint will help with contrast on the natural wood background of the backing board. A couple of coats of white spray paint works well.
After the letters dry, now we can glue them to the backing board with wood glue or super glue. Give the glue time to set as described in the instructions, then use sand paper to smooth off the tops of the letters.
To finish off the project, I used a matte clear spray polyurethane to protect the wood. Two coats seemed to cover to cover it well.