That is made from a photograph of a fingerprint taken with an ink pad on photo paper. I sometimes need to enhance contrast in Photoshop to make it clean enough to be converted to a vector file that feeds the laser. That is burned at full power and several passes to get the depth we want. The plate starts as a round disc cut from solid bar on the lathe and gets flattened and elongated with my rollers. After lasering, the plate is sanded to flush to remove some of the dross the laser kicked up, and then it is drilled and brushed. It's a surprisingly cool look and should be very permanent.