Anyone Else Excited Football is Back? – Laser Cut Football Walkthrough

With the start of fall comes the start of football. I, like many others, am excited for both college and professional football to start back up again. I thought the best way to bring this in was to create some sort of art to celebrate the start of the season. In this post, I’ll walk through my process of creating a layered football art piece.

General Idea Parameters

The idea for the football art started with something that would be multilayered. I wanted to focus on creating an outside perimeter of a football itself. Inside the football I decided on engraving a football field and inlaying some veneer that had a leather look. The veneer would cover the background around the field and on the football outer edge minus the laces portion. Once I had the general idea, here were some of the specs I decided to use:

1. Height of the football would be about 150mm
2. Football field engraving would be 90mm by 40mm
3. Three layers all with the outer edge of a football
   1. Bottom layer would be the football field
   2. Middle layer would be a spacer
   3. Top layer would be a football

Now that I had all the specifications and idea down, I was ready to move into SolidWorks to begin the design.

Creating the 3d Parts in SolidWorks

The first part I decided to create would be the top football part. To do this I imported in some clip art of a football into SolidWorks and traced it out. You can find my process on how to import in a picture with this blog post. It was a quick shape to trace to the dimensions described above. As I mentioned before, I focused on tracing the outer edge and then the inside laces. After tracing out the proper areas, I extruded the sketch out to 3mm for my laser cut material and had a part that looked like this:

I flattened out the bottom portion of the football so that it would be able to rest on a flat surface. Also, I tried to emphasize not creating a perfectly symmetrical football which I think would lend to a more realistic final look. Once that piece was finished, I moved onto the middle spacer part. To create that part, I copied the football into a new file and closed off the edges where the laces began. This let me quickly create the spacer for the outer edge looking like this:

Finally, it was onto creating the final bottom part that would be the backdrop of the whole piece. I removed the inner edge of the spacer sketch and extruded out the base 3mm. From there I worked on creating the sketch that would be the football field. I followed the dimensions above, by making the field a symmetrical rectangle focused around the centerline of the laces. I also added in some hash marks down the field for a little extra detail. Leaving the endzone detail for LightBurn, I had a final part looking like this:

Once the parts were completed, I needed to create a few shapes for the veneer overlay. As stated above, the veneer would sit on the bottom piece around the field and then on the top part minus the laces. I just reused the bottom and top parts already created and cut out the sketch to fit where I wanted the veneer. This led me to have two veneer parts looking like this:

With all three parts and the two veneer covers completed, it was time to create the assembly in SolidWorks to verify the fit and size.

Creating The Assembly in SolidWorks

Since the veneer covers didn’t really add much to the assembly itself, I focused on putting the three football parts together to get an idea of what the final piece would look like. The three parts to be included in the assembly all had the same outer edge, so the mating was very easy to apply. I just attached two of the edges together for each of the parts to have the three parts lay on top of one another. This led to the final assembly looking like this:

I was happy with how the football parts looked and I was going to finish up the endzone engraving within LightBurn. Now that the assembly was finished, I exported out the 3D models as .dxf files to be transferred into LightBurn. I followed the steps written out in this blog post to transfer over the files and was ready to do the final processing in LightBurn for the cutting.

Moving the Files to LightBurn

With the set of .dxf files of the football, I imported them all into the LightBurn drawing space. First, I needed to add in the text to the endzones on the football field. I decided to use the word “FOOTBALL” and sized it accordingly to be centered and across the entirety of the rectangle. After that was completed, I added in tabs to the outer edges of the football so that it would stick to my stock material while cutting. I reorganized the parts to fit in the cutting space and I had a final LightBurn file looking like this:

I had four layers to cut with my 40W XTool diode laser. Layer 0 and layer 15 were cutting, layer 2 and layer 3 were engraving layers. These were the settings used:

1. Layer 0, black – 100% power, 22 mm/s, 3 passes – cut
2. Layer 2, red – 22.5% power, 90 mm/s, 1 pass – fill engrave
3. Layer 3, green – 22.5% power, 80 mm/s, 1 pass – line engrave
4. Layer 15, purple – 100% power, 22 mm/s, 1 pass – cut

Post Processing and Conclusion

The cutting for the three parts on the left side of the LightBurn screen capture of the football went well on my 3mm wood. The final two parts on the right side were of the “leather” like wood veneer. While test fitting the veneer to the wooden parts I ended up snapping one side of the veneer off. I found that the corner of the rectangle with the outer edge of the football was very flimsy with the veneer. If I were to do it again, I wouldn’t make it such a close fit. Thankfully when I assembled the pieces together with glue, each piece held together well enough. I first glued the middle spacer to the bottom piece, then the bottom veneer to the bottom piece. Following that I glued the top piece to the middle and finally the top veneer was added. After letting the glue set, I ended up with this piece:

Overall, I was really pleased with the football and thought the veneer was a great touch to make the football “leather”. I hope you enjoyed the journey for welcoming back this fall sport and maybe even learned something along the way! Don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter to stay updated on all things laser cutting and receive regular doses of creative inspiration with projects, tips and exclusive content straight to your inbox! And for those eager to dive in right away, simply click below to access the files and start creating your own football. Happy Cutting!