Check Out Kyle Baxter’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kyle Baxter.

Hi Kyle, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
We Started in 2017 with a hobby saw mill and slowly grew our capabilities and machinery based off customer requests and wanting to provide higher quality products. We became licensed with Kansas State University in late 2023 and started making metal signs, then added a couple high production lasers. this allowed higher quality and the ability to mark many different items. We know offer production saw mill services, large format flattening and finishing for wood products, as well as the ability to laser mark any kind of material. We have a full line of Kansas State products as well as Kansas and regional themed items. We also offer custom items from business promotional items to one of a kind customs.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has had its ups and downs, as any small business we continually fight trying to make sure people know we are here. part of what we do is a specialized market and so it is a smaller group to sell to. When purchasing new machinery to grow there is always that “did we make the right decision, should we have gone down this path.”

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We cover a pretty wide spectrum, we started out operating a full production saw mill, and offer kiln drying for wood, we are one of very few that operate a kiln in our area, continuing with the wood side we operate a large format sander and planer as well as a 5×10 CNC for finishing wood projects, the CNC was what allowed me to cross over into the K-State manufacturing, it allowed us to start making our line of metal signs which come as LED light up or just metal sign. from this point we started looking at other unique products that many larger stores didn’t carry or we thought we could make slightly better, then came all the lasers……. by which with out going into a lot of detail on them. there is different kinds of lasers that allow you to mark or engrave on different materials, we have just added our fourth laser to the team which is a U.V laser and this allows for markings on plastics and makes extremely high quality marks on glass. the other three lasers are a Fiber for metal work, and two different kinds of Co2 machines that mainly take care of organic materials and our tumblers. We are most proud to say that we make everything right here in Manhattan, KS. we do not do drop ship from an over seas manufacture. This along with it being just a super small team of me, my wife Bernadette, and one additional team member the ability to be fully hands on from start to finish with any custom work.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
I would say our local customers that have supported us from day one, and continually order from us or show up to vendor shows to “see what we have came up with this time” or they have pushed us to try to work with new materials, currently i had a long time customer ask if we can laser a logo on 100 t-shirts, i said give me 20 minutes I’ll let you know! (well we can) but its that kind of interaction with our customers and friends that we love, they know they can call and say hey what about this, and we always say lets find out.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cedarmillsks.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CedarMills.KS