Pug Coaster
A laser-cut and engraved birch plywood coaster shaped like my pug Toast. Also fits a Red Bull can perfectly.
// Challenges
Getting the engraving and the cut path balanced so the pug face read cleanly without scorching the wood. Tracing a stock pug image into a clean vector and combining it with my own Onshape outline for the coaster body. Sizing the coaster a touch smaller than I planned, which ended up fitting a Red Bull can almost exactly.
// Skills Used
// Outcome
A birch plywood coaster with Toast's face engraved on it and his name set above. 3 in by 2.2 in, 0.125 in thick. Sits on my desk holding Red Bulls.
Brief
A laser-cut and engraved coaster shaped like my pug, Toast. Birch plywood, with the pug face engraved on the surface and the outline of the coaster cut from the same panel. Personal project that pushed my laser-cutting skill into engraving territory.
Process
Vector setup. Outline of the coaster drawn in Onshape so the shape was dimensionally exact (3 in by 2.2 in). Exported as a DXF and brought into Lightburn. The pug face came from a stock reference image. I used the Lightburn trace tool to convert the raster into a clean vector path, then cleaned up the resulting curves by hand so the eyes and ears read sharp. Added “Toasty” as a Lightburn text box at the top.
Two-pass strategy. Red lines defined the cut path (the coaster outline). Black lines defined the engrave (the pug face and name). Running the engrave first while the wood was still rigidly fixed to the bed avoided any shift between operations.
Settings tuning. This is the part of laser work that takes patience. I ran small test squares to dial in the engrave and cut.
- Engrave: 350 mm per second, 30 percent power, 0.065 mm line interval, bi-directional fill. Fast enough to avoid scorching, slow enough to leave a crisp burn.
- Cut: 20 mm per second, 75 percent power. One pass through 0.125 in birch with a clean edge.
Laser operation. File on a USB. Loaded in Lightburn on the laser computer. Switched on the power for chiller and compressor. Turned the laser key. Right before the cut, exhaust fan on (confirmed by the green light). Set origin with the laser head arrows, focused the laser with auto-focus, and framed the cut against the physical material to confirm the part would fit.
Result. The coaster came out a touch smaller than I had planned. Turned out the proportions to a Red Bull can are almost exactly right. The engraving reads sharp from across the room and up close.
Skills Built
- Vector cleanup. Trace tool gets you close but the final vector quality comes from hand-cleaning the result. I now expect to spend ten minutes after every trace cleaning up the path.
- Engrave settings as a separate problem from cut settings. Two passes, two completely different speed and power profiles, two different goals.
- Test squares before the real cut. A 2 cm square scrap takes one minute and tells you whether your settings work. Always.
- Boss Laser operation. Chiller, compressor, exhaust, key, focus, frame. Procedural confidence on this specific machine.
- Designing for material thickness. 0.125 in birch plywood has its own cut profile that does not work for 0.25 in MDF. Material first, settings second.
What I would do differently
A backstop registration jig so multiple coasters could be cut from the same panel with perfect alignment. And maybe a thin clear-coat seal on the engraved surface so spilled drinks do not soak the burned wood.