Assasins Creed - Ezio's Belt Buckle - Laser Cut and Etched Costume Piece

Assassins Creed... Cool Game... 'nuff said.
My friend wanted to make an Ezio Costume for Halloween and needed this crucial piece made.
The buckle is ornate and pretty hard to make with drawing and carving on a piece of wood so he sketched it up on Illustrator.
I cut a piece of clear Acrylic to fit on the laser and had it done in an evening.

stuff needed:

Laser Cutter / Etcher
Acrylic Plexiglass
Silver acrylic paint
1/4" Plywood backing
Belt strap

Step 1: Graphic Design Setup

Ezio's buckle was drawn up by Ryan Patron in Adobe Illustrator.
Two layers were used - one for the etching or rastering, This will give us the details of the design slightly below the surface. The second is an outline or vector which will be where the actual cutting happens.
I used an Epilog Helix 45 watt laser.

The Illustrator file is attached. Thanks to Ryan for sharing his file.

EzioBelt.ai
Download

Step 2: Laser Etching - Test Pass

We ran a test pass to see the depth of the etching - we wanted the design to stand out!
Since it is a pretty big piece, the laser etching takes a while - the test passes let us practice on smaller scraps so we don't waste material.

Step 3: Laser Etching the Buckle

Testing is done and we liked the way it looked.
Time to run the final piece.

Step 4: Laser Cutting

Once the Raster is finished we move on to the Vector cut.

Step 5: Final Assembly

With the buckle cut out, all that was left to do was paint it silver and add the backing plate and belt strap. I really love how the acrylic got a good texture from the laser, it shows the details off really well.