Need Help Acrylic letter making

[ewded]

Hi Guys,

Anyone knows how to make acrylic letters, I tried these chinese hair straightening style things but they are just ... toys you cannot make any decent looking letters with them. I also tried hot air gun - but yet again no luck.

 

[letterman7]

Uh, unless you have a molding or forming machine, you won't make those by hand. We order ours through Gemini here, don't know what's available in Europe.

 

[ewded]

Uh, unless you have a molding or forming machine, you won't make those by hand. We order ours through Gemini here, don't know what's available in Europe.

What bothers me most is that I can't find what that acrylic forming or molding machine looks like.

 

[astro8]

That green letter doesn't look fabricated. It's a bit of an art making acrylic fab letters. You generally use 3mm acrylic, make a pattern on paper whatever and use a heat gun and a heat strip made from heating elements, a neon ribbon burner, self made type of oven thing to heat long strips to form long curves, etc, etc. . You use bits wood, wood patterns, pipe, anything to get the curves right and you generally only get one go at forming curves.

Those chinese heat things aren't for bending acrylic. They are for bending that cheap plastic stuff they use. Acrylic needs a lot of heat.

Letters only made up of straight sides aren't that difficult but O, S etc and anything with a serif is way more difficult.

You're best bet is to spend a day on youtube and watch a lot of videos to see how some do it and you'll get a gist of what is required.

You'll need the thin glue, thisk glue, heat gun, hand router, assorted stuff. I generally score and snap the lengths but you can get a small slide saw.

I've never liked making them and avoid it these days.

Good luck.

 

[ewded]

That green letter doesn't look fabricated. It's a bit of an art making acrylic fab letters. You generally use 3mm acrylic, make a pattern on paper whatever and use a heat gun and a heat strip made from heating elements, a neon ribbon burner, self made type of oven thing to heat long strips to form long curves, etc, etc. . You use bits wood, wood patterns, pipe, anything to get the curves right and you generally only get one go at forming curves.

Those chinese heat things aren't for bending acrylic. They are for bending that cheap plastic stuff they use. Acrylic needs a lot of heat.

Letters only made up of straight sides aren't that difficult but O, S etc and anything with a serif is way more difficult.

You're best bet is to spend a day on youtube and watch a lot of videos to see how some do it and you'll get a gist of what is required.

You'll need the thin glue, thisk glue, heat gun, hand router, assorted stuff. I generally score and snap the lengths but you can get a small slide saw.

I've never liked making them and avoid it these days.

Good luck.

Hi Astro8, if you take a trip in a big mall you'll find at least 10 stores with these acrylic letters, some are at eye level you can actually touch them. I was looking at them very closely and saw that they are not hand made. They were perfect. I mean perfect on S and O and P and such. Using MDF forms (cut with a router) and heating the strips in an oven maybe works, but some of the stores are only small, local ones and I just can't imagine they'd pay for something that complicated.

 

[astro8]

Yeah, they're perfect. I've made thousands of them. They are either hand fabricated, cast resin, molded or injected, that's it. Anything over 30mm thick is mostly fab, anything under is solid.
If they are illuminated, they are opal acrylic with leds. In days gone by they were all internal neon at least 100mm deep, we made the neon for those too, still do. Nowadays you can get away with 50mm anything under is usually 25mm solid opal acrylic with channels routed into it with leds. We do those too.
I wish there were an easier way but there's not.
Same as stainless steel, brass, aluminium letters, all hand made... yes we make those too.

 

[Johnny Best]