Hello everyone,
Recently we've made an effort to improve our channel letters from what we had before.
What we had before was a channel letter with an acrylic side so all of it was lit but we also had demand from an important client for non-lit sides. When we provided the version we usually do the client wasn't really happy.
The way we did it up until that point was by using profiles like these:
We never liked the look of these profiles either and since the client didn't like them either we set out to make a better channel letter.
After pondering for a while we decided to get ourselves some thin aluminium sheets and cut them up into strips and use them as our channel letter sides. To help and increase the accuracy of the bending process we also milled a channel to half the depth of the acrylic face (1.5m deep / 3mm acrylic) and make the channel as wide as the aluminium side we're using (usually 0.5 or 0.7mm). We bend the letters into the shape of the letters and then glue the sides to the front of the letter with superglue while adding rectangle support "blocks" out of acrylic every few centimeters to make them stronger. Then we prepare them for the painting process and spray paint them.
They seemed pretty much perfect and we made sure to test how they hold up to stress and pressure and they seemed really strong. We made dozens of these and everything seemed fine. A few days ago a few of the guys decided to work outside as the weather was nice and they took the letters outside to work on them. After standing in the sun for half an hour or so the letters started falling apart. At this point we realized that the glue didn't bond properly on the aluminium. We took a few more letters outside and a lot of them had the same problem.
Now we have a huge problem with these, we have dozens of signs with this problem, they're pretty much finished and scrapping them isn't an option.
Another problem with them is that at the joint where the gap on the side connects the paint breaks on some of the letters, this isn't a huge issue as most of the joints are on the upper side of the letters so they aren't really visible.
Is there some glue that we could use to salvage this situation ? Something that can bond raw aluminium with acrylic.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Recently we've made an effort to improve our channel letters from what we had before.
What we had before was a channel letter with an acrylic side so all of it was lit but we also had demand from an important client for non-lit sides. When we provided the version we usually do the client wasn't really happy.
The way we did it up until that point was by using profiles like these:
We never liked the look of these profiles either and since the client didn't like them either we set out to make a better channel letter.
After pondering for a while we decided to get ourselves some thin aluminium sheets and cut them up into strips and use them as our channel letter sides. To help and increase the accuracy of the bending process we also milled a channel to half the depth of the acrylic face (1.5m deep / 3mm acrylic) and make the channel as wide as the aluminium side we're using (usually 0.5 or 0.7mm). We bend the letters into the shape of the letters and then glue the sides to the front of the letter with superglue while adding rectangle support "blocks" out of acrylic every few centimeters to make them stronger. Then we prepare them for the painting process and spray paint them.
They seemed pretty much perfect and we made sure to test how they hold up to stress and pressure and they seemed really strong. We made dozens of these and everything seemed fine. A few days ago a few of the guys decided to work outside as the weather was nice and they took the letters outside to work on them. After standing in the sun for half an hour or so the letters started falling apart. At this point we realized that the glue didn't bond properly on the aluminium. We took a few more letters outside and a lot of them had the same problem.
Now we have a huge problem with these, we have dozens of signs with this problem, they're pretty much finished and scrapping them isn't an option.
Another problem with them is that at the joint where the gap on the side connects the paint breaks on some of the letters, this isn't a huge issue as most of the joints are on the upper side of the letters so they aren't really visible.
Is there some glue that we could use to salvage this situation ? Something that can bond raw aluminium with acrylic.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
