Composite Wood-Acrylic Award

In this Instructable, I took a beautifully designed wood award created for UC Berkeley's Aero SAE team by one of their members, Sangyeon Lee and sought to make it out of both acrylic and wood instead.

I received the files from Sangyeon; it required some slight tweaking to adjust the design to suit two materials. Specifically, you want to clarify which parts intend to be acrylic (in our case, the inner, scored/engraved portion would be) and what parts should be wood (in our case, the outer frame). Try to be careful to consider exactly what needs to be cut out of each material to fit together properly. Hopefully the images help to show this, but feel free to ask me questions related to your projects as well! You'll also want to thicken some parts of your inner design so that both pieces will press fit together. This is important!

On the third artboard, I added a base that the award would press fit into. This reduces the mess of glue or epoxy needed to put all your pieces together!

On our lasercutter, I then proceeded to cut out both designs - one on wood and one on acrylic.

Then you just put your pieces together! Some parts of my design ended up being a bit loose, though others press fit in well. I highly recommend and emphasize testing how much thicker you'll need to make your inner design for it to be held in properly by the outer frame! Otherwise you'll have some loose bits and pieces.

Aaaand, there you go! The wood-acrylic combination offers a different look from just the wood, so it's a nice alternative to keep in mind in case you want to spruce up your DIY awards. Hope you guys like how it turned out! Let me know what you end up making as well.