basic push-thru illuminated signs

[Rocco.G]

Since this forum doesn't seem to get much "love", i thought I'd post a couple of pictures of what i'm doing with my new toy. We have to make 62 of these for a mall in downtown Philly. Most will be to rework four existing monument signs (and also background panels cut on teh CNC) with another bunch to replace faces on another set of those signs. While I mainly make electrical signs, I'm looking to do more of the 3D work in HDU. These are kind of boring, run of the mill stuff we do.

The faces are cut from 0.125" aluminum (the raw unfinshed shot) and the other is of a finished piece. The blue panels still have the factory protective film, so no it's not blue aluminum. The letters are cut from 3/4" thick white acrylic. With Aspire it's so easy to make the tool-paths and i'm glad I spent the money on it.

I just got my cold gun so these were cut with me following the head around with a can of WD-40 and doing two passes instead of just one. I'll be SO glad when I have the gun installed. I need a longer nozzle (to avoid making a custom bracket for the gun) and that will arrive sometime next week. Plus I still need to do the setup on the ATC which will make things easier.

18 down, 44 to go!

3488534886

[scottp55]

Nice clean good looking jobs!
May be boring to you, but I bet it pays the bills.
3D can be hard to make it pay unless you have the right clientele or niche market.
Thanks for posting those!
scott

[fredtoo]

Have you thought about using 1/8" or 1/4" dibond or it's equivalent? Cuts like butter.....

[Rocco.G]

I cut d-bond (other brands of ACM but still the same stuff) for the backs of channel letters and yes it cuts easily, even with cheap bits. I can't use it for this application because we had to weld thin strips of aluminum to make a pan. I know that it can be done with ACM panels but we had to match what's there. Also, we have to stud weld threaded connectors onto the back of the pans, again to match the existing sign frame. For the signs on a different street we glued 3/4" x 3/4" aluminum tube to the faces to give us the depth needed since we are making the whole set of faces. We used Lord's adhesive 406/19 (about $65 a tube) which holds as well as welding, plus there were no weld marks to sand out, etc. These are at ground level and IDK if ACM would hold up because these are in the heart of Center City Philly (aka 'downtown' anywhere else) and they have had problems with people beating on the faces and knocking in the plastic. Maybe 6mm would have worked.

it's the usualy deal with signs. Ask five shops and you'll get twenty different methods of making the same thing.