Decorative Metal Fence Post Caps

Here are what will be needing for this project, blank metal fence post caps and gloss clear spray sealer.

Step 2) This project starts with creating a rectangle withe the insert button and sizing it to a square shape like the metal caps,

Step 3) In this step a pre-made floral design was brought in with the use of the image button, this image happens to be a SVG that was stored on the computer. It too gets size to match the size of the metal caps.

Step 4) These metal caps are shaped with a raising peek in the middle so by no means are they flat, for this reason I wanted to remove an area from the center of the design. I am doing this for 2 reasons 1 of which is to break up the design and more importantly because of the height difference the laser head can be focused properly without have to get to close while engraving. So in order to do this it was quite simple. A circle was created using the insert button, it was sized to an approx 1.5" and was placed in the center of the design. I wanted to make sure it was completely centered so I used the align tool and selected horizontal and vertical to place it dead center. Once this was achieved I selected it all and used the combine feature and selected Subtract.

Step 5) In this step the settings are adjusted to engrave, Like mentioned before the shape of the cap needed to be addressed for the proper focus so because I removed the design in the center there was no engraving at the highest point of the cap which allowed the focus to be adjusted properly to engrave the rest of the caps.

Step 6) Now that the laser has finished the cap was removed from the machine, however it had a faded look from residue and needed to be cleaned, to my surprise this was done simply with a damp cloth. The discoloring just wiped away freely. Once this was done a high gloss clear coat was applied for protection from the outdoor elements. As you can tell it is raining like crazy today so the rest of the caps will need to wait until the weather clears up.