Alder wood plaques

[Brad Patturelli]

I am going to make some memorial plaques for family members. I bought some from JDS. I will have a picture a poem and cross. My question is should I mask the board? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[John Lifer]

Engraved? Probably not, cut off the air if you are engraving at least that is my suggestion. If you were colorfilling, I'd say mask. Otherwise no. No matter what others might say, I cut off the air on my Chinese machine almost always if I'm engraving. Too much crap resettles with the air. Vector cutting it s on.

[Brad Patturelli]

Thanks for the suggestions. Yes I will be engraving. Probably should have thought about colorfill but forgot about that.

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

Part of it will be personal preference, another part experience, another part is how easily it cleans up. If there is a picture/photo, I would not mask that area. If there is a simple graphic and/or text, I may mask it because it's fairly easy clean-up especially with the plastic razor blades that have been talked about on this forum. Color fill also depends upon what you plan to use for color fill. Most of the time I will mask with paint color fill. Depending upon the quality of the finish, I can use powder coat without masking it first. There are times I will mask the whole item first, do what I need to do with the masking, then peel it off and finish with the photo engraving.

[Joe Pelonio]

Part of it will be personal preference, another part experience, another part is how easily it cleans up. If there is a picture/photo, I would not mask that area. If there is a simple graphic and/or text, I may mask it because it's fairly easy clean-up especially with the plastic razor blades that have been talked about on this forum. Color fill also depends upon what you plan to use for color fill. Most of the time I will mask with paint color fill. Depending upon the quality of the finish, I can use powder coat without masking it first. There are times I will mask the whole item first, do what I need to do with the masking, then peel it off and finish with the photo engraving.
Yes, good advice. For just text, you will get beautiful clean results if you mask with transfer tape, and vector cut just through the paper. Then weed out the paper, go back to your software and fill the letters again with back and engrave, without moving the board of course. Is do this mostly with pre-finished wood with letters to be paint filled.