Sign Making 101- Tips for Wood Signs: Material, Finish, and Bit Selection

[Music] custom wood science made easy made easy with a cnc yes this is a cnc video my first projects with a cnc and so it's sign making it's just a great place to start for those with a cnc for those of you who don't have one yet stick around check it out i i really i learned a lot through this process and and here i am just trying to share what i learned as far as different material types different finishing options what works uh different accessories to use to to make your project really you know come to life what bits to use so it's it's a really basic uh introductory uh video to sign making with the cnc great place to start for those of you who maybe are a little bit more seasoned feel free to jump around so check out those time stamps down below to jump to the section you want if it's a little too slow or you already know it just just skip around but lots of possibilities as you can see here and really truly possibilities are endless whether you're a hobbyist like me or you want to have an etsy shop and do some customization just so many options here so check it out making some signs with my at 2r cnc this video is brought to you by imagination to reality i2r stay tuned to the end to see what makes their cnc's stand out so first up wood selection so i love hardwoods most of my channel i feature beautiful hardwoods with all their natural colors so that's where i love to go to however as you're learning a new tool you don't want to use these really expensive really nice woods to begin with and so i do recommend starting with inexpensive woods like plywood right this is plywood melamine mdf or just some construction grade pine just something at the box store just to kind of learn or maybe reclaim wood would be a great place to start as well if you do want to get into the hardwoods and all these beautiful colors the natural colors no stains i have a whole video wood 101 kind of talks about where to buy these where can you find them as far as and as well as the different colors and species but one way that i do love and that i'll definitely use a lot more in the future is just vertical grain first and vg fur it really produces great results it's a soft wood but really you get some really nice effect this is just a simple v-carve and these pieces sometimes they're pre-finished who could make really quick work for batching uh you know obviously this jatoba this brazilian cherry you know the hardwoods they look amazing but as you're getting started there's nothing wrong with plywood so this was just plywood i mean you can see this was just some scrap plywood i had and you know this was my first cut and it turned out really well uh this v carve turned out really nicely and so the one consideration with plywood is there are multiple layers there's the plies and so you just have to think about how deep you're gonna go you know as you set your depth the other thing if you're doing more intricate carbs like so you might lose some pieces right you might lose some of the detail here and so like this pelican here i lost a little bit because it just was it was right in between those layers and so most people couldn't tell but again that's something to consider this is melamine it was just a melamine right and it cut really clean so that's certainly an option an option as well mdf is is what most people go to especially for you know this style of science those are all plywood back there but mdf is really inexpensive takes a little bit more uh to to paint and so there's some extra considerations there but let's take a look at my first project with mdf and give you some tips seeing the machine in action cutting some mdf so the biggest factor with mdf is priming and really painting right you gotta it absorbs so much paint so quickly i'm just gonna have to keep sanding uh repaint re-prime it and that'll take you some time and it's also weather dependent uh then at this point i'm adding some masking so i'll talk more about this oramask material later in the video and some considerations but it really does a great job to help get a really crisp line and then here i am loading up the machine loading the file and then carving away the thing the other thing about mdf is it is the biggest offender when it comes to sawdust i didn't have the dust shoe or the boot hooked up here and it was just fine um you know you're just gonna have to keep an eye on it but it really just be aware of that right but it cuts super clean mdf cuts really well there's not too much sanding that's going to be required afterwards it is a very inexpensive material to use and so it is preferred by a lot of folks but some extra work with painting and so here i'm just doing a quick clear coat then adding some more of that filler primer and then adding my color uh some black make sure it dries let this all dry before you peel it off but here i am peeling it off this is super satisfying are you gonna see how crisp those those letters are and it just really it cuts so well downside is when you rush a job and you don't wait for the paint to cure and then add the plastic and the masking on you ruin the paint job like you see here and so at this point i'm like awesome super but just forged ahead and just pulled off all of the things uh all of the masking with the little little tool here made a quick work of it uh and to see what i got and i decided to pivot and i just went rustic that's that's what woodworkers do and so i distressed it a little bit more did some more sanding and i went ahead and called it rustic this was a practice project after all and you know what it turned out okay wasn't what i was going for but it was a decent look so if you're going for that rustic weathered uh look you know rock it this way and so that's an option for you uh but it did it did turn out rather nicely i'm a fan of of how it looked with a nice frame but another material is melamine so melamine it's already painted white and it works really well it also cuts really clean and so here i have an image and then i have text that i'm cutting out and i will give a full tutorial later in the video on how to use the software and some more considerations as far as bits and tool paths and all that kind of stuff but here you can see how the melamine works as far as a material choice and it cuts really clean it is a decent uh selection it's just a little bit more brittle um so again that's something to consider but then you want to prime it paint it peel it and um there you go there's some alliteration for you i'm sorry i can't help myself uh but it turned out nicely so melamine is an option uh especially for testing out uh your cuts and and whatnot all right here's another quick tip for you having extra stock on hand now not just like your materials but finished materials so for instance i was prepping some some panels i was priming it as you can see here and i thought hey might as well grab some other pieces so chopped up some extra pieces now here i have a bunch of extra panels it came in really handy to have pre-primed uh pieces uh here it's just some construction grade you know dug fur and went ahead made some extra panels stained it uh you know thought oh i have a little bit more stain here's just a scrap piece of plywood to test out again this is pretty common sense but it's still a great tip uh paint right i had some extra paint left over but yeah you know what i might use that color again so just having some extra pieces on hand now i've got all of these these pieces ready if i have a custom uh custom order a custom piece come up or uh an occasion a special occasion a gift for someone i can whip up a project a lot quicker and not have to wait for paint to dry or to fully cure so another quick tip so here i am just prepping some material you're just using some plywood some pine some of the less expensive stuff i mean everything's more expensive nowadays but some more affordable options that you can find at the box store and like you saw earlier i'm just painting away so i'm doing some primer right it's about two coats of primer that way when i'm ready uh for adding paint it's gonna be quicker i'm not gonna spend forever with the spray paint for whatever color it just seems to be an efficient method for me so again plenty of other options you can do but we've got a primer down and then it's time for spray paint so lots of colors it's just a quick a quick solution there's some other reasons i'll get too shortly why i like spray paint other options as well of course but uh it's pretty satisfying quick add me adding some color here rather quickly get the color down and you're good to go i just went with about two coats and then i did a clear coat afterwards and the clear coat before carving i think is really important and here's why [Music] all right so some of the accessories fair amount of other tools and whatnot you see in the shop links down below if you're interested but the one thing is the aura mask so this is this masking material which works incredibly to get the really really nice effect especially for painting however something i learned through the process i don't know let me know in the comments uh you know why this is but when i just use this was just a latex based paint a latex paint with the oramask especially on a really fine engraving v-carving it didn't hold up and it didn't adhere as well um and i had some issues with it i also obviously if you don't wait for the paint to cure and you put it down with a spray paint you really do want to if you're spray painting way overnight for it to fully cure and dry at least you know read the directions on the back of your your rattle can to do but for whatever reason i've had zero issues when i went with just spray paint and if i had a top coat also if i had spray paint without a top coat but the spray paint i had no issues it stuck really well especially for that really nice fine detail so i highly recommend if you're going to use the aura mask go with a spray paint or if you're going to do paint just do a top coat so that way it's going to adhere a little bit better it's just a lot stickier i don't know what that what is anyway or mask great stuff works really well other ways to do it but if you're going to use the horror mask save yourself the headache and all that and then of course you know your handy little little tool so much fun uh but this works really well a lot better than your fingernail anyway little tips or a mask check it out good stuff so once you have your painted piece go ahead and add the aura mask go ahead and add it down uh pressure some people use a credit card or a spreader then here i am just finding the center point to line it up on my machine and uh once once the painted piece with the ore mask is on load your program and so here i'm just doing i'm doing v carve again once again i'll talk more about this later in the video use those time stamps if so desired but you can just kind of see how these spray painted pieces with the aura mask work again these are plywood this is just plywood to test out and kind of see these sports logos uh how it turned out but this really this material works really well let's talk bits so obviously cnc machine it's essentially a router uh router bits actually quite a few of your woodworking router bits would still work on the cnc you just would have to check the collet size so i just want to jump in real quick on a couple of the key bits uh for those of you woodworkers you probably see the advertisements for tools today a lot or bits and bits they're two great companies they do an extra coding astra coding or the spectra coding for amana bits that works great too so i kind of went overboard i bought a bunch of new bits you don't really need to uh take it easy my i2r came with with a starter set from whiteside some great bits really most of what i did all of these projects you see i just used a v-bit i just did a v-carve really simple to learn this software uh you know over time i'll learn some more uh so i'm not going to do a deep dive into all the different bits i just want to talk about a couple ones that i used here so let's take a closer look so like i said most of my cuts i just used a v bit right so this is a 90 degree i use the 60 degree the one that's in the collet right now but really you get amazing amazing results and so this is just using vcarve in the vectric software it just cuts so clean and it's just super easy really it's it's the easiest step so i really that's what i did for most of my work and for this this works really well the one thing that you'll see here is this was all v-carve so you see how deep uh the tree portion went so it went pretty deep here um so one setting you can change on vectric is you can change it to flat depth and so that that's some some more we'll get into later or maybe in future videos and so for some of my projects that would be too deep with the material and so you can then you know change the settings but the problem is if you are going to route out larger sections these pockets this is just some particle board and it doesn't look as bad here but it actually does a horrible job i mean just imagine this v bit is just dragging back and forth back and forth it's just that little tip and so you don't get a great finish and so you know many woodworkers we know that down cut bits produce an amazing finish so down cut bits is is the best way to go problem is a down cut bit if it's a quarter inch down cut bit i can't get all of this detail especially with these sharp corners and so i did you know do a test cut here uh with a with the ball nose all right so this is usually this tapered bit is great for 3d carving and so such a clean super clean cut and it's a little rounded in this in the corner i believe this one goes down to a sixteenth of an inch uh down here and it just it cuts super clean and so this worked really well ignore this this was a user error on my part quite a few of those as i was learning the machine but anyway uh this is it is an option i didn't do too much experimenting i did this a little later in the game but it does a cleaner bit it's a little bit wider surface uh there at the bottom other than just the v bit but really like i said a down cut bit is your best option for a clean uh for a clean look especially if you're trying to pocket out a larger section so here and the star wars sign see how clean that is super clean cut and that was using this bit right here so this is a end mill it's just a down cut it's a quarter not a quarter inch well it's a quarter inch shank but a 16th inch at the end so just like the the ball nose bit uh it just cuts so clean and i don't have a perfect square corner there not a perfect square corner um it is super fragile right super small there again user error on my part i did snap this bit this one was 30 bucks so that was a bummer you know teeny teeny tiny but i got i'm sorry it's not focusing there for you but anyway got a nice clean cut there and so if i'm pocketing out a larger section uh for for my signs like here like here uh that that is a better option than v-carve and so if i just use the v-carve bit you're just gonna have to do a lot more sanding so something to consider pocketing there are other options yes loads of other ways to do it especially within the software some other things that could definitely save you time some efficiency we'll jump into that in future videos again use those time stamps if you just want to jump ahead but a little bit more about the bits so again v-bit works great i used it for most of my stuff it's just if you're pocketing out i do recommend switching over to either this 16 inch down cut end mill or we're using this ball nose uh which also has a 16th inch tip at the bottom so we'll have a cleaner cut save you sanding it's gonna look that much better one other bit i didn't do a ton of this with this batch of science but you can see here this washington outline uh i cut out uh the perimeter and have this this other piece it's not a plywood and it held up really well and i got the cleanest cut minimal sanding and that was because i used a compression bit so a compression bit has both the upcut and the down cut i used a 1 8 inch compression bit so i could get all those corners it cut amazingly well also have the the quarter inch but a compression bit you just have to make sure that first plunge goes about a quarter of an inch deep enough and it just works so well so if you're going to do some of these cutouts uh definitely check out the compression bits all these bits and more down a link in the description can check those out but let's jump on ahead to the next step so here i am be carving out again one of those sports logos this again is using that 60 degree v-bit using the v-carve program i will talk more about this at the end of the video with the software talking about flat bit flat depth excuse me but if you're going to use the v-bit for everything and you just want to have one bit it is possible it's just again going to require a little bit more sanding but it still cuts really clean on the sides just the bottom and so once you clean up the sides go ahead and you flood it and so i flooded it with some primer and then here i'm just using some acrylic paint to get the two-tone effect some people will use milk paint or you could use latex paint to fill in these colors here but this is a way where you can get more than one color uh as opposed to i mean i guess i could cover it with spray paint excuse me i could cover with masking tape and and do it another way but this seemed to work well and uh having the acrylic with the paint brush made touch-ups a little bit easier so that's another consideration but then once you pull off all that masking pulling off the ore mask it sure pops looks great so lots of possibilities so here's another example i'm flooding it flooding it with paint and then you pull it off and even though this is plywood and it was just that v bit it still turned out really really nicely and it turned out pretty clean it's a little rough in those larger sections in the middle but it still looks great using hardwoods hardwoods are amazing and that's really what i envision myself doing mostly and so here i'm just got a piece of jatoba brazilian cherry and it carved out really nicely and because these hardwoods especially the hardwoods are are hard and dense and so you know the grain structure there's not as much sanding required you know you are going to probably have a wire brush that you'll need to take just to get some little uh nibs and little particles there but it cuts super clean uh right off the machine bed and then um go ahead and you lay a clear coat down so this is really important if you're gonna add any spray paint you wanna seal the grain and so now that i've sealed the grain with the lacquer now i can flood it with black same thing here i'm going to seal all of the grain with a clear coat just some kind of lacquer and then that way it's not going to bleed my paint color is not going to bleed into the wood grain and not come off now that it's sealed let it dry now i can flood it with whatever color i want so here going with white or the other one with black and so flood it make sure you wait for the paint to dry once that paint has dried then you can go about sanding if not you're going to get some of that sawdust in there here i just paused the show again you can make it look rustic if you want this is a look for some not for me but if that's what you're going for you could you know kind of make it look a little rustic uh that is an option but uh go ahead if you have a good sander this doesn't take too long you know you could use a drum sander other than you have to mess with line so this didn't take too long at all and it really does turn out rather nicely and so you just want to remove all the paint and because it's that v v carve profile all that paint is recessed down below and so uh get it all cleaned up and then add some more lacquer or whatever finish you want on the top just to bring it back and a nice protective coat it really does pop so this is a great thing that doesn't require masking here's that other one with the black in the jatoba and so go ahead and go on through the grits i started with 80 on these and then worked my way up with the random orbit and it looks really nice and you don't have to have the paint in here it still looks really nice just with the wood but if you want that contrast it is an option so now that it's all done i'm adding some more lacquer and i build up the coats like i would with any piece you know five to seven coats um another option here is that vertical green uh vertical green fur bg fur and this uh i could have done the same way where i just you know didn't use the masking at all but just showing here how you could do it with that or a mask where you don't have to do the the sanding and so it just saves a little bit of time but um anyway it turned out really nice this is probably the most efficient of all the options is just getting these panels uh they're already prepped it's perfect size uh the vg fur cut really well and it's it's a nice piece i'm a fan of it and so i'll be doing a lot more of these in the future but here you can see i went ahead cut the sign and again i'm going to go ahead and first make sure you spray that lacquer you've got to seal that grain first otherwise the paint otherwise the paint is going to bleed everywhere on you and then go ahead and flood it and do a couple coats just to make sure that you have uniform paint you get it everywhere yet where you need it and let it dry let it dry wait and then go ahead and peel it all off and it really pops you'll probably have to do a little bit of sanding afterwards but then again go back with whatever finish you want to do and they look rather nice and just nice quick pieces and just all v-carve here makes quick work of it so certainly a great option so this is a super quick tip options for framing you can just do simple butt joints no glue just use some pin nails and a brad nailer that's certainly an option um it's again it's whatever you're looking for but if you are not a woodworker you're more of a new cnc'er this is a great option really easy for a diy-er you certainly could make some some more refined frames with miters and do the rabbets and do the full thing to do a more sophisticated frame there's plenty of videos online how to do that and then again use those tools you can use pocket holes so here for that big sports sign i just went ahead and used a pocket hole jig and got everything uniformly spaced and then i ended up just plopping it in with brad nails i didn't even do recesses with rabbits to have it seat in there where this is going to be stored i'm not worried about people seeing it on the side so plenty of options for framing this is not gonna be a tutorial on framing but uh here you can see they're just there on the side and then i just went ahead with the brad nailer and just threw in some brads and uh it worked great and it still looked clean so plenty of options for framing uh if if you're new to woodworking uh check out some frame videos online i know fix this build that build that brad rodriguez has got a great one but framing some options all right so here we are rockin v carve pro this is v car pro 11. uh if you do not have the software then just skip on ahead uh if you do uh and you want more videos like this please let me know in the comments and i will do some more so just really quick starting off here's my material got everything set pretty straightforward uh and then here we go so i'm going to go ahead and find a mountain clip art piece so here i just search mountains black and white clip art uh black and white usually is easier you can do it with color but black and white is the best if possible you want to get a large file so this is a pretty pretty large file and so find a piece that looks well that you think will carve well and go ahead and click on it then right click save image as uh and then mountain line art whatever whatever you want to save it know where you saved it and then i got it saved all right so now i'm going to go ahead and open so i'm going to open up that file i'll go back to my pictures find it there it is i got my mountain and once i've got my mountain i want to do this feature right here so this is called trace bitmap so right on over here i'm going to click trace bitmap and so the value of black and white it's just that much easier you can do color plenty of tutorials online how to do color but i got my black and white clicked scroll on down click preview and then you can see i got my vectors it's giving me some vectors click apply close good to go um sometimes when you do this you're going to get some weird little things so you can zoom in and see you know if you need if you have extra little nodes or whatnot that you can delete looks like i'm good here good to go but i'm for my piece i want to have both a picture and text so i'm going to hold down the shift key so it's centering the picture and i'm going to resize it let's see i already got my vectors so i'm just going to get this out of the way it's fine i got my vectors good to go and we're going to go slower you know because the people are watching there we go all right and so i'm going to bring this kind of up top i can re-center right here just use this feature to re-center and keep in position hold down the shift key i'm going to make it a little bit bigger and then let's bring it down just a skosh all right it's not let's not because we're just going to jump ahead all right then i'm going to add in some text so here we go we'll say the mountains are colleen and i must i must go so a little john muir quote here in the pacific northwest um you know what i'm happy with that font i can change a different font if i want but you know what i like it i'm good with that obviously i need to resize other ways to resize but i'm going to go ahead and zoom out so i can see it shrink shrink it center it um it's probably you know what actually i'm okay with this size so this is just the image file i don't you know i'm gonna just delete it i don't need it i just need the vector and let's zoom in all right the mountains are calling and i must go um i'm happy with that so i could then add you know in other features here i could add in you know borders but this is just simple uh for for a tutorial so the mounds are calling in i must go i'm going to click on the text and i'm going to do a vcarve toolpath so then i click on toolpath and click on vcarve i've been using the 60 degree bit you could certainly do a 90 degree bit you would just select whatever you want i'm doing start depth i'm just going to leave it as is zero not messing with anything else here this one is just that's it that's all i have to do then i click calculate and it's just going to run it through it jumps into three 3d carving modes so i can kind of see what it looks like looks fabulous so i'm going to go ahead close uh not that i need to but i'm going to rename this as text all right let's go back to 2d mode and now i'm going to click on my picture so with my picture i still want to do a v-carve but i want to show you some other options under tool pass i could do a v-carve which is what i'm going to end up doing for this piece but you could uh like i mentioned earlier use one of those other bits whether it's the ball nose or the down cut bit and then i would hit the profile tool path and so i already have it in here it's an end mill 1 16 inch that's my down cut and so i've clicked cut depth 5 hundredths of an inch so it's not going to go super deep that way i get that nice pocket nice and clean kind of like i showed on that star wars sign earlier and so that's how i did it and then i would just go ahead and click calculate and it would calculate for me like what it would look like um however for me uh i am going to show that vcarve option so i said earlier how i did a lot of this with just the vcarve okay still got the right vector selected i could click flat depth so all of those you know seattle sport signs i did the mariners logo and whatnot i clicked flat depth and so what that did is it didn't keep going until the full v-carve bit went all the way down to get the full v and i just got went ahead and picked you know again like five hundredths of an inch so it went down a little bit but it got flat so it's flat depth it doesn't have that deep recess so that is an option if you want to have flat just understand that you're going to have to do some extra sanding if you use that v-carve bit so i'm just going to do the full depth i have enough material thickness to do the full v-carve on here however if you don't have the thickness i recommend using that v-carve mode just flat depth of 500 of an inch or whatever works for you or you could do a pocket tool path a pocket tool path and then you could select uh whatever that is so if i want to do a ball nose bit uh that that looked really clean uh you know 1 16 of an inch or i can do that end mill that down cut down cut's going to be really clean and then you would just click select and then again you click calculate and just get a better idea of what this is going to look like let's go ahead and show it preview alright so it kind of shows you what it's going to look like here with the profile so this isn't going to be the deep v carve it's going to be just um a flat so give you an idea it's really simple pretty straightforward and uh there that's what it's going to look like and so can mess around with it if i don't love the look and uh just gives you a feel for it so there you have it a quick little tutorial on v-carve if you want some more on this in future videos let me know in the comments if you have some other videos with some great tips drop them in in the comments section as well all right next step so last but not least just want to do a quick little look at uc cnc so this is the software that actually runs the cnc machine i'll have more videos more content of this in the future if you're looking for more let me know in comments but here is just you can see me at the same time as i'm running it on uccnc uh i'm running it to my x and y to be zero zero and now i'm entering that uh my piece and clamping it down i'm getting right where i want it uh here my it's all matching up right and so uh then i'm using the touch off tool uh making sure i get my my z clearance uh set so if this sounds way too much for you and it's like overwhelming it's really not it's really not i'll do some more basic videos in the future uh if you're new and don't be daunted by the project but once you get everything set up then you just have to find your program and it's it's that right you load your program that you already did in vetric this is the one we did earlier and i load it and normally you would check your tool pass you would do all of that i'm not gonna do that here you're not gonna see it but i've loaded it and now i'm just gonna hit run and so uh then you just stand back and watch your machine take off and and really you see cnc is great uh to be able to control everything from the computer that's one of the things that i2r machines have that not a lot of other units have so i'll talk more about that in the future but uh here is that one that that we designed together and here here it is carving and so here oh my gosh this is just a piece of construction grade fur uh we have the the v bit this is the 60 degree so it got really deep really deep in here but i had the thickness to handle it but this just shows a stain piece a piece of wood that got stained and what it looks like with contrast at this point you know i could just leave it like this i could finish you could also do some masking and paint it white for that offset as well but there you go all right a huge thank you to i2r imagination to reality for making this possible uh right obviously with the cnc machine but you know sponsoring this video and making it possible for me to make these cool things with some awesome cnc machines so really quick i want to talk about what i think makes them so incredible is the fact that it is such a simple setup i was able to get this machine up and running in no time you know there's the onboarding call customer service is incredible any issue they do have training calls available for teaching you how to use the machine software all that kind of stuff they can do remote logins uh if that's your need but just some great great features uh it is a robust machine it's fantastic so you do have your smaller units available uh these are the b series uh but you know if you have a smaller space two by two two by three and then you get to uh this is the unit that i have so this is the b24 um so an incredible unit so much possibilities loads of other options but a huge thanks to i2r and get excited for some more cnc content in the future all right there you have it a semi comprehensive uh introduction to sign making with a cnc great beginner project great beginner project so if you don't have one yet i'm going to be doing some more videos some more cnc videos really exploring uh all that this machine can do and just there's so many possibilities i'll be getting back to a lot more hardwoods which really is what i do if you look at my channel again please consider subscribing if you enjoyed this if you found value typically it's hardwoods and so got some really fun projects getting started but kind of walking you through my journey as i'm learning the machine if there's anything i left out if there's something that you think would add value uh both to me and my craft but also for future videos drop a comment down below uh you know whether it's other videos that i should check out different ideas or your own opinion about something that's more efficient uh and just other ideas so anyway sign making with a cnc woodworking it is woodworking it's just it's just a different type of woodworking so anyway thanks for watching we'll see you next time

Channel: Six Eight Woodworks

Views: 97,358

Keywords: Vcarve, Vcarve pro, i2R, i2R cnc, CNC for beginner, how to use a CNC, wood sign, Wood signs, wood sign business, wood sign making, Wood sign ideas, wood signs that sell, Sign making business, sign making wood, Custom sign making, Uccnc software tutorial, Vcarve software, v carve, Woodworking business, Woodworking projects to sell, woodworking projects that sell, cnc sign making, cnc signs that sell, cnc sign making software, cnc sign ideas, cnc signs, cnc sign maker

Id: o5O7QyuULeE

Length: 34min 50sec (2090 seconds)

Published: Fri May 20 2022