Laser cut wire labels
16/03/2026
The idea of designing laser cut labels arose from the Monitoring of electricity consumption project.
First intention was to use cat.6 Ethernet wires to link the meters to the tinys, gathering the tinys below. A first wiring was even realised that gave, at the top:
and at the bottom:
Needless to say that a precise labelling of each wire was required! Alas, although professional lettering labels were used, they were not convenient at all. Labels were hard to read and dropped!
Thus the idea to laser-engrave and cut specially designed labels for the task. They are as small as possible (16x8 mm). So they were prone to fall beneath the honeycomb grid of the laser machine. That's where another smart design proved to be helpful. On the picture below, a keen eye can see that there is a gap at the bottom of the outline contour of a label. It holds the label until it's used. And it's easy to cut too.
Of course a program was written to output all labels in the format used by the laser/engraver machine:
A close study of this program shows some differences with the labels visible at the top of this post. That's because there were several plans for the wiring ordeal…