Painting question new here

[Signssignseverywheresigns]

Hello all, I have a question about painting I hope someone can answer or give some suggestions rather, I work for an architectural sign company and we produce ALOT of photo polymer signage quantities in the thousands, when we paint them we have carts with a piece of plywood on top and the wood is paper masked, at our company meetings our owner is always looking for an alternative for putting the signs on the boards, we currently use blue putty to stick the signs to the board, it’s re usable which is nice, but the owner thinks it takes too long(rolling the putty into long pieces then cutting into small balls) does anyone have an alternative? Having a couple hundred signs on the board is pretty common as they are usually but not always small in size. We have tried dowl rods with mactac on them but it doesn’t work so well, anyone have any ideas? Would be greatly appreciated. Also we have a paint booth where we are spraying the signs not hand painting obviously.

 

[Gino]

If it's too much work, why not farm them out to someone who would like the work ?? Not seeing your setup makes it basically unrealistic to give you any good ideas.

Also, you might try writing in sentence form and not making the reader decipher what you're trying to say.

 

[Billct2]

Agree, a little more info would be good. What you're doing now doesn't sound terrible when dealing with lots of small signs. We have some board with nails driven thru them so points are up to put letters on when we are painting them. Some version of that may work. I think I would search what finishing processes are used by large manufacturers in similar situations. For instance the company across from us is a metal finisher and has to spray thousand of small components. I would look at other industries to see how it's handled.

 

[TimToad]

Have you ever seen the rolls of anti-cat spiked matting available through pet suppliers?

The spikes are spaced about an inch apart and are just pointy enough to hold your panels level.

It's relatively cheap and at about an inch tall would keep your panels up off the table top.

Worth a try.

 

[Signssignseverywheresigns]

Sorry about the run on sentences, I was piss drunk last night when I wrote the post. I’d love to include pictures of the setup but it’s the weekend, I’m at home. The anti cat spikes look interesting, but I fail to see how the signs would stay in place, without adhesive the paint gun would fling them off. Thank you for the responses though guys. I’ll put some pictures up Monday. Also as for farming them out, doubtful, the owner bought an entire Mathews paint booth setup etc....

 

[Boyanski]

What i would do is simple vacuum fixtures connected together with vacuum lines. The vacuum fixtures smaller than the signs. All can be clocked together to a simple vacuum cleaner or to a commercial vacuum pump. If designed correctly will not cost much and will not be expensive.

So basically all could be one size and where needed 2 or more could hold bigger stuff. You just need a flat table or surface where you paint.

You push a button and in a couple of seconds all is fixed. You paint. Push a button and all is not fixed, exchange , then repeat.

If you are really interested i can design them and fabricate them for you. I am in Spain.


I am talking sth about like that ones , but don't listen to his bubbling as he has no idea what he is doing. In your scenario the pads has to be designed differently and the pump should be different, so all that happens instantly and you dont wait. The pads could be made even semi disposable from wood or whatever if price is a problem.

 

[Signssignseverywheresigns]

I like that idea I’ll show this post to the higher ups on Monday. My only worry is the sheer amount of ADAs we have on each board which vary in size, anything from 2x4 to 12x12 and sometimes bigger. It would require many of the fixtures, but I do like the idea. Thanks for the reply hopefully they like it and I can get some brownie points haha. It fits the criteria though, re usable, lifts the actual signage off the board to prevent paint buildup on edges etc. Thanks to all for the responses and if anyone else has ideas would love to hear them!

 

[Boyanski]

The pull is incredibly strong. Normally these fixtures are used for machining. For painting 1 of 20x20cm fixture could hold anything say to 100x100cm, , 2 fixtures 30x30 cm could hold 100x200cm and so on. Once the exact requirements of the job are known, all could be custom made to suit.

I fabricate constantly custom vacuum fixtures for different type of jobs. The other thing will be use a vacuum table and adjust to jobs, but then you should cover constantly the parts of table you don't use and as you are painting, that's not the best way...

In reality a 5-10cm fixture would hold on place anything so you can not pull it off, the added cm are for stability of the sheets or whatever you are painting