High-Gloss Doors With Stainless Steel Inlay

These doors were made for Rare Bar at the Encore casino in Boston, USA. I was tasked with programming and machining these doors, as part of the team who manufactured them at Bar None Design.

Final product, In the shop before being shipped and hung on-site at the Medium Rare Lounge at Rare Bar.

Photo courtesy of Rare Bar

There were two sets of double doors with the same design in this project. One set of doors was 96” tall and the other set was 106 3/8” tall. Each door had two faces which needed machining. There was also three transoms of varying sizes to be manufactured as well.

The doors were designed to have alternating grain direction of two different high-gloss plastic laminates. This required each section of laminate to be cut and pieced together before being laminated to the door. Once both faces of the doors were laminated, the channels for the metal inlay had to be machined in the exact desired location. I spent a lot of time running tests for these reasons.

Dealing with high-gloss laminate and polished stainless steel added a layer of difficulty to this job. Any scratches, dimples, loose seams, or other imperfections would catch the light and become visible.

Stainless Steel Inlay Process

Once the manufacturing drawings had been approved, I was tasked with making stencils for the metal fabricator. I made one set of positive stencils (to represent the metal) out of Baltic birch plywood and one set of negatives (to represent the doors) out of MDF.
I tested a few types of glue with some scrap pieces to ensure a smooth and clean final assembly. I also tested different channel depths and widths to achieve the desired design intent.
The stainless steel we received from the fabricator had issues with its tolerances. This resulted in some of parts not fitting the templates we had provided. The final machining programs had to be modified to match the size of the metal.
Each piece of metal inlay was measured and dry-fitted countless times against test doors. It was very important to have a snug but easy fit as to not damage the glossy laminate.
All visible surfaces were taped off before the stainless inlay was glued into place. The inlay was vacuum pressed into the machined channels. Each door face was pressed one at a time for at least four hours.

Laminate Process

Before cutting the good laminate, scraps were cut and pieced together to test the process and make sure the seams were tight.
Once all the pieces were taped together, the laminate puzzle was glued onto a test door. This allowed us to create a process for centering the puzzle to the door. The force of the vacuum press was so strong the tape holding the pieces together was imprinted onto the laminate.
Once the test door was laminated together, it was moved to the CNC router where the metal channel was machined. Doing so revealed that we could not trust the positive stop on the machine bed to precisely locate the door for the final machining operation.
It took a few test doors to perfect the entire machining process and to get a perfect fit for the metal. Once the we were confident, the real laminate was machined in the same way we had practiced.
The good faces of the doors were covered in a film at each stage of the process to protect the high-gloss. Once a face was no longer being used, it was covered.
A program was created to trace the middle of the metal channel using a v-groove bit. This allowed me to fine tune the location of the door on the bed and ensure the door was in the exact location needed before cutting.
I also used some straight edges as reference to fine tune the location. I could place shims of 0.001” or greater between the edge and the door for fine tuning in any direction.

High-Gloss Doors With Stainless Steel Inlay

These doors were made for Rare Bar at the Encore casino in Boston, USA. I was tasked with programming and machining these doors, as part of the team who manufactured them at Bar None Design.

Protective Barriers