Wooden Nickels

There’s an old saying “Don’t take any wooden nickels” but I say “Do take some wooden nickels!”

Especially if they’re laser-cut wooden nickels from Milwaukee Makerspace.

Wooden Nickels in CorelDraw

Here’s my file in CorelDraw, with different colors to indicate the front etching, back etching, and the cut.

Laser cutting wooden nickels

I taped down a piece of 1/8″ Baltic Birch plywood to the laser cutter platen so it wouldn’t move, and then I set the laser cutter to etch the front (which is our logo, in blue) and ignore the other parts.

Once I was happy with the front etching, I changed the settings to cut the outline (in red) and ignore the black and blue. After the cut was complete, I pulled out the pieces and flipped them over for the back etching.

(Here’s a tip for you: I mentioned that I taped down the piece of wood so it would not move, but the other trick I have it to use a piece of tape to check if the cut is all the way through. I just stick a piece to the cut piece and see if it will lift out.)

Laser cutting wooden nickels

Our nickels have the front etched, have been cut out, and now they’ve been flipped over and put back in place to etch the back.

Laser-cut wooden nickels

And here are our completed wooden nickels! Ready to be handed out at any event we might be attending, or to guests of the Makerspace.

I’m not 100% happy with them, mainly due to some weird file formatting issued between creating them in Inkscape and importing them into CorelDraw as DXF files, but those are all minor issues we can tackle next time.