Laser Making a personalized Coco Coir Doormat

A nice doormat is the first thing a visitor see`s, so why don`t make an impressive impression.

Like everything you can do with a laser, the possibilities are endless.

You can make a doormat with your family monogram, Christmas-themed Santa footprints, or just some funny words, so everybody knows who they have to deal with.

All you need is:

A good laser
A Coco Coir Doormat
And some patience

Quality is everything

The first thing you need to make sure is that the doormat you buy, has a decent quality.

They don’t have to be expensive.

I get mine from IKEA, they are called Trampa and 60 x 40 cm large for about 3,50 €.

Even they are really cheap, the quality is brilliant.

Just make sure you won´t have some coconut wood in your mat as you buy it.

Sometimes in the making, some of the wood gets stuck to the mat. It will get really dark as you laser it and eventually ruin your picture.

The structure of the mat is really dense, what is a point you need to watch out for.

If the structure is too loose, there is a possibility of the coir falling out after lasering, or most important, the laser will get through the coir and burn the glue on the underside. This will cause a lot of unhealthy smoke and parts of the mat to become loose. I heard about people really having issues with lasering a doormat.
Mostly it would be the fact, that the mat hasn’t got the needed quality.

Also I heard people asking if they need to water the mat or spray something on it before starting.

For me I can say I never needed something like that. Always just bought a mat and started. But that doesn’t have to mean that the same will work for you, I can just share my experiences.

Design is everything

If you know what you want for your mat, the design part starts.

The possibilities are endless and you could make everything you want.

As mentioned in the beginning, you could make a split-letter monogram with your family name as shown below, or you could make some footprints of Santa Claus and some of his reindeers, it`s all up to you.

You need to make sure, that all your projects need to have solid lines, if they are too small, you won`t be able to see them properly afterward. Because all the coir fibers are a little bit different, a small line will not be visible.

After you have finished the design part, you have to align the mat to your laser.

As the Object is really big, you have to make sure it is really aligned to the Laser.

Otherwise, you will get a crooked image after hours of work.

For me it works best to move the Laser above all edges of the mat and make sure it has on all four corners, the same distances.

And try to check the Focus distance in every corner, because sometimes the mat isn’t cut straight and the material is a bit higher on one side.

So make sure your laser doesn’t get stuck in one place.

Once you`ve made sure everything is aligned, you need to make sure you choose the right settings.

Here it depends all on your Laser. I`ve started with less possible power and faster speed.

I wouldn’t recommend using an Air assist, as it will blow onto burning fibers and eventually start a fire even faster.

You really need to think about, you are trying to burn something with a laser, that is otherwise used for starting a BBQ.

So always make sure you know what you doing, stay next to your laser, even if it takes a long time and have a fire extinguisher next to you, otherwise, you will burn down your laser or even more.

I approached the right settings that worked well for me step by step, so you will need to do the same because on every Laser they are a bit different.

If you have found the settings that work good for you, press start and watch for Fire.

After almost 3 hours of lasering, I got the final result in my Hands.
A beautiful, personalized doormat for some friends.

As you can see, I tried to make this monogram really big.

It has a full size of 30cm high and 30cm wide and is well readable, even from far away.

The brown line you can see on the upper half is just the shadow of the x-axis.

With the right settings, I got a nice dark finish, that doesn’t look too burned when you look closer.

As you can see below, the fiber is dark, but not burned, you don’t want to make it look like molten wax.

I made one a few months ago and can`t say anything bad about the durability.

Clearly, after u used it a lot, it gets a bit lighter in color, but won`t start to look bad at all.

If you think, that it just took a few dollars and some working hours, it`s really impressive what you can do. And if you`re trying to use it for a few more years, you could probably just put some clear coat over it to protect the fiber a bit.

In summary, I can say that it`s very easy to make your own doormat.

Just make sure that you never leave your laser alone while doing such a flammable project.

And finally, I want to show you some of my own mats I made for family and friends.