Why paint plywood?
Being a natural product, there is always the chance of having some section of your laser plywood that may not have the appearance-grade you need. Painting plywood can be a simple way to repurpose your laser plywood, opening up a huge range of possibilities.
What paint?
Paint type is ultimately your own choice, however in this example we have chosen to use Squirt spray paints that are easily available at Bunnings. There are 29 colour options and they dry extremely fast (touch dry within 10 minutes).
* Always follow the paint instructions
* If laser cutting make sure to use an enclosed laser with externally vented fume extraction
Budget Laser Plywood
In this example we are painting our Lightweight Plywood known as Falcata. The paint adheres nicely and didn’t require any surface preparation.
Our downgraded sheets are perfect for this application as they have a further 25% discount.
In this example we only used one coat of paint and this seemed to be enough.
What does it cost?
Each spray can costs about $11 and has a coverage of 3.5m2. Each sheet was 600x300mm so we should have used about 5% of each can. So very cost effective at about 60c per 600x300mm sheet.
Our 3.2mm lightweight plywood cuts extremely easily and in this example our 100w laser is cutting with settings of 30% power at 30mm/s.
The designs were purchased from Creative Fabrica here.
Final Result
This seems to be a great way to use downgraded lightweight plywood or smaller sections of laser plywood that may otherwise be discarded. The paint didn’t flake or bubble and adhered perfectly. Engraving worked nicely and a damp cloth easily removed any surface residue. In this example the material weight and material cost were about half of what coloured acrylic would have been.
This is a very cost-effective solution that will let your creativity run wild.
