Protect Your Maker Assets! Laser Cut Sign

In a previous Instructable we told the story of our makerspace's woodworking area. Although not finished yet, the space is already kind of awesome - which meant we needed to get a sign up there and tell the world who it belongs to. We haven't even got the door painted yet - but we now have a sign laying claim on our little corner of awesomeness.

The sign is made from an offcut of oak. Our makerspace is big on making the most of what you have. With a large and unsightly knot, this piece of oak might not have been destined for furniture or projects, but was just what we needed to add a little rustic charm to our woodworking shed!

The design work was not complicated. All we needed to do was measure the offcut of wood, and create text that would nicely fit to size. Doing this was a breeze in LaserCut.

We set the laser cutter to engrave our sign. Because it is oak, it requires quite high power, we used 60% on our 100w laser, but we had the speed quite high at 600. We were going for a rustic but defined look for our sign.

Once the laser had engraved our sign, the next step was to sand it down back to a smooth, clean finish.

Next, we needed to drill fixing points in. Because it is a fairly hefty slab of oak, we needed to use a fairly powerful drill. We used a countersinking bit so that the sign would fix nicely. We are a makerspace and we need to be able to take pride in our work!

We fed our sign with linseed oil, to make it shiny and show off the grain of the wood. Linseed oil is not particularly protective, but it will look great and can be retreated regularly.

Once our sign was finished, we could fix it to the door of our maker shed and tell the world who owns it! Our makers are proud of it, and we look forward to the next step in creating our maker shed!