Your first laser-cut sign

2 November 2026

A laser cutter turns a sheet of plywood into a sign, a box or a desk organiser in minutes. Our laser templates work like the rest of the designer: type the name, choose the shape and size, and download a file your laser's software opens. Here's how to get a good first cut.

An honest note first: we don't have a laser cutter of our own yet, so these templates haven't been cut on a real machine. The shapes, joints and spacing are all checked on screen, but cut a small test first, and tell us how it goes.

Start with a sign

The Laser-Cut Name Sign is the easiest first project: one sheet, no joints. It comes in three styles:

Engraved: the words burned into a rounded, oval, arched or plaque-shaped board, with an optional frame and hanging holes.
Layered: the letters cut from a second sheet, often a darker wood, and glued on for a two-tone sign.
Word cut-out: the words themselves are the sign, joined by a bar underneath.

What's in the file

You download an SVG, the file laser software expects, laid out on your sheet size. Its colours tell your laser what to do:

Red hairlines are cut right through.
Black fills are engraved.
Blue lines (on some templates) are scored: traced lightly, without cutting through.

In your laser software (xTool Creative Space, LightBurn, Glowforge and the like), give each colour its own setting. Set the engraving to run first and the cutting last, so the piece doesn't shift once it's cut free.

Two numbers to get right

Sheet thickness

Measure your sheet with a ruler or calipers rather than trusting the label: "3 mm" plywood is often 2.8 or 3.2. It matters most for anything with slots and tabs, like the Box Maker and Desk Organiser, which fit together only if the slots match the sheet.

Kerf

The laser burns away a thin line as it cuts, the kerf, so pieces come out a touch smaller than drawn. The designer makes up for it: set Kerf to your laser's. 0.15 mm is a fair start for a diode laser on 3 mm plywood. To measure yours, cut a 20 mm square with the kerf set to 0 and measure it: however much smaller it comes out is your kerf, so a square that measures 19.7 mm means a kerf of 0.3 mm.

Materials

Basswood plywood, 3 mm: light, even, cuts cleanly. The best place to start.
Walnut or darker plywood: for the second colour of a layered sign or the board of a Crossword Sign.
Acrylic: crisp and glossy, cut by most CO₂ lasers (clear acrylic is hard for a diode laser).
Never PVC or vinyl: they give off chlorine gas when cut, which is harmful to you and your machine.

Each template's "What you'll need" lists the sheets, glue and anything else it takes, worked out from your settings.

Safety

Never leave a laser running unattended, keep the lid closed while it works, and vent the smoke outside or through a filter. Wood smoke is unpleasant; plastics' can be worse.