A business logo sign is the best paying job a small plasma shop can get. A local company will pay $300 to $900 for something you can cut in an afternoon, they usually want more than one, and they tell other business owners about it.

They are also the job where most people get burned, because the customer sends you a JPEG off their website and expects a sign.

Here is the whole thing, start to finish.


Ask for a vector file. The words to use are: "Do you have the logo as an AI, EPS, SVG or PDF from whoever designed it?" Most businesses have one somewhere, usually from the sign company or the person who did their shirts.

If all they have is a low-resolution JPEG off their website, you have two options. You can trace it, which I cover below, but you need to tell them up front that a traced logo is an interpretation and small details will change. Get that agreed before you cut, not after.

Never quote a price before you have seen the artwork. A clean vector logo is an hour. A messy raster logo with thin script and a gradient is most of a day.

This is the part that separates a sign that looks good from one that comes off the table as slag. Go through the logo looking for:

Thin strokes. Anything narrower than about 1/8 inch of actual material will blow out, warp, or just disappear. Script fonts and thin outlines are the usual culprits. Thicken them.

Floating pieces. The middle of an O. The dot of an i. An island inside a shape. Every one of those needs a bridge — a small tab connecting it to the surrounding metal — or it drops through the slats when the cut finishes.

Gradients, shadows and glows. These do not exist in steel. A logo is going to become a silhouette, and you need to decide which parts are metal and which are holes. Show the customer a black-and-white version before you cut so there are no surprises.

Tiny text. A tagline in 8pt type on screen becomes an unreadable smear at sign size unless you scale the whole thing up. Sometimes the honest answer is to drop the tagline.

In Inkscape, the sequence is roughly:

If you are starting from a JPEG instead, use Path → Trace Bitmap first to get vectors, then clean up hard. Traced logos always need node work, because the trace follows every jaggy pixel.

16 gauge covers most interior signs up to about 24 inches. Stiff enough to hang flat, thin enough that detail survives.

14 gauge for anything over 24 inches, or going outside, or where somebody might lean on it.

Finish is where you make margin. Raw steel with a satin clear reads industrial and costs you almost nothing. Powder coat in the company's brand colour is what actually sells to businesses, and it is worth $75 to $150 on top of the sign. If you do not have an oven, a good rattle-can enamel over etch primer is acceptable for interior work — just do not tell them it is powder coat.

Mounting matters more than people think. Standoffs that hold the sign an inch off the wall look ten times better than screwing it flat, and they cost a few dollars. Include them and quote accordingly.

Do not price this off material. A 24-inch logo sign in 16 gauge is maybe $15 of steel.

You are charging for artwork cleanup, cut time, finishing time, and the fact that the customer cannot get this anywhere else with their logo on it. A realistic range is $300 to $900 depending on size, finish and how much artwork work was involved. If the logo needed heavy tracing and reconstruction, that is billable time and should be a line on the quote.

Quote the artwork cleanup separately from the sign. That way when the next branch wants the same sign, the second one is cheaper and it is easy to say yes.

One local business becomes three. Every trade that comes through their building sees the sign. Restaurants, gyms, breweries, contractors, dealerships and churches all buy these, and none of them are price shopping against a mass producer, because nobody else has their logo.

It is also repeat work — new location, new sign. And it pairs naturally with the smaller personalised pieces you are already cutting.

I take a real business logo from the file the customer sent through to the finished sign on the wall in this one:


[Watch: How To Make A Metal Sign From A Business Logo — Start To Finish](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P43JwbdB00k)

If the artwork step is where you get stuck, the bitmap tracing tutorial covers turning a raster logo into usable vectors:


[Watch: How To Trace Bitmaps In Inkscape — Turn Images Into CNC Cut Files](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqhU2q2x1m4)

Cut the logo of a business that has hired you to cut it. Do not cut somebody else's brand on spec, do not put manufacturer badges or team logos on things you sell, and do not build a catalogue of other people's marks. That is the fastest way to get a letter you do not want.

For the pricing side in more depth, see [what to charge for CNC plasma work](https://www.tinmanmetalworks.com/blog/what-to-charge-for-cnc-plasma-work). For finding the businesses in the first place, [where to sell your CNC plasma work](https://www.tinmanmetalworks.com/blog/where-to-sell-your-cnc-plasma-work) covers the approach that actually gets a meeting.

And if you want practice files that are already cut-ready while you get your process down:

[Get the free CNC plasma cut files](https://www.tinmanmetalworks.com/blog/free-cnc-plasma-cut-files)