This is probably one of our longest blog posts ever but I wanted to showcase the options across a wide variety of materials and processes we offer for our amazingly custom wedding, birthday, event cake toppers!
Although the graphics you will see below and the video above are focused on weddings, they can be for any event happening anywhere, I just used the same wedding cake topper to elaborate on how we go about making these but the process is the same regardless of the event it’s for.
Now that we have the infinite material options and events out-of-the-way, let’s take a look at contrasting samples of custom cake toppers, the first up is color changed 3 mm or one-eighth thick black acrylic.
We do a lot of metal work here at CNCROi.com which necessitates us having a dual-sourced machine, which means one with both a fiber and CO2 laser tube. Fiber is used to anneal stainless steel very dark (pic below – this is NOT black ink but tempered due to a heat process)…
… while the CO2 is used to engrave into and cut just about every other metal known to man. What’s neat about this capability is that it also extends into plastics rather nicely. Looking at the picture below, left is fiber color changed while CO2 is engraved on the right.
So, when it comes to these custom cake toppers, we do the same thing, color changing this black acrylic off-white without using inks that come off or fade!
This means you can wash this without being able to remove anything as nothing was added, it’s just on the very top surface that the color changing happens.
After the initial color changing using our fiber laser tube, our laser then switches to CO2 to cut out the inner holes of the custom cake toppers followed by the outline.
Plastic is essentially oil, so yes, there are flames but we have a top of the line Austrian industrial wide-format CNC laser which means this is no problem. These custom cake toppers won’t melt into a puddle at the bottom of the vacuum table.
The results look FANTASTIC! This custom cake toppers is now ready for any cake out there, big or small and due to the fact that it was all made by us, we can make them at any scale – have this 4x bigger on your table or behind onto the wall, it will be just as precise and awesome looking!
Taking a look at this custom cake toppers, you can see the clarity, you can pick any fonts, size, color (for color changing, it’s almost always off-white or green) and design you wish.
CNCROi.com is a custom design, engraving and cutting shop, we make what you want using materials and processes that are optimized to your application. These custom cake toppers are only a small sliver of our capabilities!
Next up is solid semi-transparent acrylic that is 1/4 inch or 6 mm thick. Acrylic is available in a wide variety of colors, opacities and thicknesses, it gives incredible flexibility when it comes to custom cake toppers.
The dust you see in these pictures of this custom cake toppers is the same dust that shows-up on the other acrylics within this blog posts, you just don’t see it as apparently. We carefully wash all of these custom cake toppers before they leave the shop by the way.
There is a protective film that is left on the acrylic so when you see flames and the like under this custom cake toppers, they don’t actually melt the acrylic from underneath.
As our industrial laser goes thought the motions on this custom cake toppers, it’s pretty incredible to think how different all these four custom wedding cake toppers appear considering they are all the identical design. The only change is material and process.
Having an industrial machine to process these custom cake toppers means ultimate repeatability, our table is not only flat but also square so the results are as consistent as the material that’s being worked on.
I know the picture below of our custom cake toppers made out of thick acrylic isn’t the most appetizing to stick on a cake but a quick clean-up in water shows something awesome!
In this case, no paint filling was done on purpose, just to showcase the engraving that happens (this isn’t color changing). Doing this on transparent acrylic is a little tougher to see but using semi-transparent acrylic showcases the engraving more clearly.
Contrasted against our solid concrete floor, you can more clearly see how semi-transparent this custom cake topper acrylic is.
Put next to the earlier custom cake topper that was fiber color changed, you can see that the designs are identical in every way. Our accuracy is within 5 nanometers, yes, NANO!
That was fun, now let’s switch gears onto custom cake toppers made out of plywood. Like acrylic, wood is available in a variety of colors, thicknesses, shapes and sizes.
In this case, we are using our CO2 tube to engrave only slightly into the wood to look more like a burn than a deep engraving – we can engrave to pretty much any depth, so if you want something that’s really deep, no problem. Same goes with the acrylic.
Wood isn’t as exciting under high intensity light when it comes to custom cake topper production but the fire comes out when we are cutting through this sheet of plywood.
The plywood in this case is a quarter-inch or 6 mm, the same as the smoky semi-transparent acrylic custom cake topper we did just previous to this one. Same design of course.
For wood, there are a few ways to achieve a nice edge, first is applying a mask front and back (depending on the level of detail required and species). Second, sanding, we have a custom designed downdraft table so sanding happens fast and safely in the CNCROi.com shop.
in addition to other custom furniture, yes, CNCROi.com can also custom design matching furniture to go with your custom cake topper!
Anyways, back to why you came here, custom cake toppers!
In the above picture, the masking is still on the wood, it just shows you the soot, smoke and resin that build-up on the surface which is easily removed along with the mask.
Next on our list of custom cake toppers is transparent acrylic, in this case, it was masked so that the laser created both the depth for the paint filling while vaporizing the mask itself in one process.
This is a little tricky as our laser is essentially melting the plastic, melt too much and you end-up with unsharp muddy results and not enough and you get a fusion of half-burned masking and plastic which is as bad as it sounds.
We work with these materials on a D-A-I-L-Y basis, so we know what we are doing to produce the best results, in this case, the job is done right the first time. There are some “Cs” in the bottom of the photos, those are material testing just to optimize our laser to this masking and material.
As with all the other custom cake toppers, the insides of the topper are cut out after the engraving but before the outline to keep everything accurate. The longer you have a full sheet of material together, the better the results.
After the engraving, we now have the perfect “base” for the paint filling, you can clearly see where the mask starts and the acrylic ends in the picture below.
This actually looks pretty neat leaving the masking on but alas, it will be removed to showcase custom cake topper paint filling options we offer at CNCROi.com.
And voila, paint filling is done and mask removed, it needs a little clean-up from over spray but overall, looks great! This paint filling works across any materials by the way, so if you wanted another “color” acrylic or even wood with contrasting paint fill, yep, we do that!
Looking at all four options, you can now see how the same design can be interpreted so many ways, imaging having different designs! There is totally a mix and match possibility here including inlays, using stainless steel, laminates and even paper if you wanted.
When it comes to custom cake toppers, like the other stuff we do here at CNCROi.com, the possibilities are as endless are our collective creativity. Our catalog is whatever we come-up with!
Luckily, you don’t need to be a design, material or custom expert – that’s our job. Your job is to send us the project and give us the opportunity to make something awesome just for you and your event! Contact us right now!
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