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View Full Version : Wood flooring as a short cut for panels?



Jay Selway
02-08-2015, 11:48 AM
So a lot of the artwork we produce is engraved as 'wood prints' for wall decor. Up until now, I've been using high quality veneer, 1/4" plywood with an MDF core. It works pretty well. The only bummer is you really have to dial the laser in to get a nice bit of contrast without getting into the MDF. The MDF looks pretty bad when it's engraved.

Naturally, I'd rather use all wood panels (even veneer core plywood sucks because of the variances in the veneers). But, to make it cost effective, I'd have to have a shortcut.

What I was thinking was using wood flooring, that's already cut to be joined, and using that as a shortcut to make quick panels.

Probably going out on a limb here, but has anyone ever tried that?

Richard Rumancik
02-08-2015, 1:09 PM
If you want to make panels out of hardwood flooring, it would still be a bit of work. There is usually a chamfer on the edges where they join so I would think you would need to plane off the chamfer so it joins flush. Then it would have to be glued flat. Sometimes the rear surface is not flat but has shallow recesses, so that may have to be planed or sanded smooth. (An alternative might be to bond the pieces as-is for flooring and then sand both sides enough to generate flat surfaces. This would probably take off 1/16" -1/8" or more which would be okay.)

Then you need to cut into rectangles (after bonding) followed by some kind of edge finishing. At least, that's what I would envision. If you were able to get the wood cheaply it might save money over buying boards and joining conventionally, but I don't necessarily see it as quick. You probably don't want people to look at your plaque and say - hey, that's made out of flooring boards.

Jay Selway
02-08-2015, 3:20 PM
I don't do plaques, big 18x24 pieces of artwork.

Thanks for the advice, I'm going to look around and see if I can find a quicker way to get panels together.

Richard Rumancik
02-08-2015, 4:36 PM
You could consider going to a local company that manufacturers cabinet doors. That is what I have done in the past. However, you will have to educate them a bit as to what is acceptable in terms of knots, grain, color of adjacent strips and the like. Sometimes they will put different pieces of wood together randomly making panels that are not suitable for laser engraving artwork. I have used Clear select maple in the past with fairly good results. However it does not laser really black and I tend to apply something to increase contrast.

What is acceptable and what is not is subjective and it is difficult to communicate this in a spec on a drawing.

If you took pictures of some of their panels (cabinet doors) you could point out things that would not be acceptable for your application. Then they could use that as a production guide to train the workers doing the panels for you.

When you use solid wood the strip can be only about 4" wide, perhaps 6" at the max, or you may get warpage as humidity changes. So an engineered plywood is not such a bad thing if you have a way of dealing with the edges. (eg a solid wood frame.)

Perhaps you could get panels made up with lower-quality solid wood (color and imperfection not critical) and add a thick veneer face? With a veneer face you have fewer issues with contrasting strips of wood. You'd have to ask them for advice as to what will work as you don't want to sell pieces and have them split or separate on you with time/humidity changes.

Mayo Pardo
02-09-2015, 10:32 PM
I haven't tried making larger panels with it but I have engraved two different flooring samples. One was bamboo and the other was fake wood grain on MDF. These were done when I was first learning how to use the laser, so they aren't as good as they could be. The bamboo piece has some black paint fill in the upper right area, the other one was not painted or cleared after engraving. The smallest text on them was about 1/32 of an inch tall.
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Mike Null
02-10-2015, 6:50 AM
I believe using flooring presents a couple more problems. One, anytime you engrave over a glue joint it's visible. Two, joints are not only visible but frequently the adjacent grain doesn't quite match and the piece doesn't present a quality finish.