Wall of Colleges Sign
A laser-cut wood-and-acrylic sign refreshing the CHARGE North "Wall of Colleges" display.
// Challenges
I didn't manage my time well on this one and had to rush the final assembly. The result is functional but the fit-and-finish suffered, particularly the alignment between the wood base and the acrylic letter inlays. I'm planning to remake the sign on my own time.
// Skills Used
// Outcome
A laser-cut pennant-style sign with the CHARGE North logo and "Wall of Colleges" text, using black acrylic letters inlaid into a wood base. It hangs in the makerspace, though I'd like to redo it with better time and a backstop for tighter alignment.
Brief
This was my first MakerSpace project at CHARGE North. The brief was open. Make something useful for the program with the makerspace tools. I picked the existing Wall of Colleges sign, which had been hanging for a while and could use a refresh, and decided to redesign it as a laser-cut pennant.
Process
I started in Onshape. Sketched the pennant outline, extruded it to my target thickness, and exported as a DXF for Lightburn.
In Lightburn I brought in the CHARGE North logo, traced it from a reference image using the trace tool, and laid out the “Wall of Colleges” text in a font that matched the program’s visual language. The plan was a two-pass cut. First pass cut the pennant outline and the negative-space letter holes from the wood. Second pass cut those same letters from black acrylic at the same scale. The acrylic letters then dropped into the wood holes as an inlay.
The laser workflow itself I had to learn from scratch. Load the file on a USB drive. Walk the laser computer through opening the project. Switch the power for the chiller and compressor. Turn the laser key. Turn on the exhaust fan and confirm the green light came on before any cuts ran. These steps became second nature after this project but every step was new the first time.
Where it went wrong
Time management. I underestimated how long the cuts would take and left the assembly for the last day. When I went to glue the acrylic inlays into the wood, the alignment was off by maybe a millimeter or two in a couple of spots. Visible up close. Functional from across the room.
I had also not designed a backstop into the assembly. Without one, I was eyeballing the alignment of small acrylic letters into matching holes. That is asking for the kind of small errors that compound across a whole sign.
The finished piece hangs in the makerspace. It works. But I know exactly what is wrong with it and I plan to remake it on my own time with a proper alignment jig.
Skills Built
- Full laser-cut workflow. Onshape to DXF to Lightburn to physical part, with all the in-between settings (speed, power, line interval, kerf compensation).
- Inlay technique. Cutting matching parts in two materials and assembling them as one piece.
- Lightburn trace tool. Turning raster images into clean vector paths usable for cutting and engraving.
- Laser safety and operation. Chiller, compressor, exhaust, key, focus, frame. The procedural side of operating shared shop equipment.
- Time management lessons. This was the project that made me take planning seriously in everything since.
What I would do differently
A backstop frame around the wood pennant to register the acrylic letters perfectly every time. A full day for the assembly instead of half an hour. And a test fitment before applying any glue. Every project that came after this one got cleaner because of the lessons from this one.