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Plexiglas Standoff Signs w/ Frosted

Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
Follow up. I just got some 1/4" P95 acrylic in from Acme Plastics and this was exactly the look I was going for. It's like frosted but more transparent which is good because of the acrylic gears that go behind it. Clean cut along the edges too. Got six, 2'x4's for $550 shipped.

I'll post photos of the finished product.

Thanks to all that suggested P95.... huge time-saver not having to cut it and frost it myself....arrived ready to go.
 
B

bannertime

Active Member
Texas_Signmaker said:
Acme Plastic. I looked at some of the ones mentioned here but landed on them. I was able to order right from the website without talking to anyone.
Click to expand...

I appreciate the source. Pretty nice to have something to shop plastics online. I had just gotten a quote from Allied and decided to see where the price stood with Acme. Without shipping they were higher than my retail price from Allied.
 
Last edited:
Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
bannertime said:
I appreciate the source. Pretty nice to have something to shop plastics online. I had just gotten a quote from Allied and decided to see where the price stood with Acme. Without shipping they were higher than my 30% margin retail price from Allied.
Click to expand...

Neat... I just called and placed an order with them... Now I just gotta fight DNT traffic to go pick it up from them
 
Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
I called back and got them to deliver.,..they said they only deliver to business and I said...well I am a business ..

scoundrals
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Maybe you should ask for a business discount, instead of paying regular retail.
 
B

bannertime

Active Member
Texas_Signmaker said:
Guy seemed to assume I wasn't a business, even though I said "Frisco Signs"... That'd be a weird name for a person.
Click to expand...

Lairds was the same way with us. Wouldn't budge on delivery even though I talked to a shop like 5 miles away that they deliver too.

Polymereshapes was like "yeah, we'll totally do business with you. 3/16th white poly is $45 a linear foot for ~72in and we'll just have to ship it in from Florida"

We hadn't done anything with Regal since they moved from Fort Worth.

Curbell didn't hardly care to respond.

We usually talk to Jeanie (I think that's her name, she's familiar with sign stuff) at Allied.

Reece and Grimco have had the better pricing anyway. We typically only get quotes from Allied for pre-cut stuff and some other random products.
 
signbrad

signbrad

New Member
2B said:
that image is 1/4" clear acrylic.
2nd surface is Hexis HX5DEPM
1st suface, plotter film
Click to expand...

This makes sense. It does not look like P-95 in the picture, which is an acrylic by Acrylite that has a matte finish (not frosted) on one side.
And 5/16", mentioned in the original post, did not seem a legitimate thickness. Quarter-inch sounds right, and is a good choice for this type of sign..

Some additional points:

Machining acrylic, whether by cutting or boring, tends to introduce micro fissures in the material, cracks that you may not even see. So does flame polishing, as mentioned, as well as heat bending.
Using drill bits made for acrylic minimizes micro-cracking around the perimeter of the hole. Drills made for wood or metal have the wrong-angled cutting edges for acrylic. They try to dig and gouge. A drill made for acrylic, on the other hand, will have more of a scraping effect. Also, it will have a sufficient rake angle behind the cutting edge to minimize heat.
A saw blade for acrylic is similarly designed. Usually recommended is a "triple chip" tooth arrangement with a rake of 0 to 5 degrees. Minimizing heat minimizes cracking.

Pinching acrylic sheet damages it, too. Again, it is unseen, but at the molecular level a tight fastener can create stress damage over time. So much so that, at some point, the pressure of normal cleaning can cause a corner to break off. This damage from prolonged pressure is called "creep." Commonly recommended is to finger tighten a fastener and then back off a quarter turn.
Hole diameter should be at least twice the diameter of the fastener's shank. The distance of holes from edges is recommended to be three times the diameter of the hole by some authorities, though Acrylite seems to recommend less as a minimum.
Countersunk holes and countersink fasteners should be avoided.

Cast acrylic is a better choice than calendered. It better resists heat from machining, and thus it resists micro-cracking better. Its polymer chains are longer, giving it greater sturdiness than calendered plastic
And cleaning without solvents is safer than using solvents. A solvent tends to find the micro cracks and make them worse.

https://www.acrylite.co/tech-briefs.html

Brad
 
Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
signbrad said:
This makes sense. It does not look like P-95 in the picture, which is an acrylic by Acrylite that has a matte finish (not frosted) on one side.
And 5/16", mentioned in the original post, did not seem a legitimate thickness. Quarter-inch sounds right, and is a good choice for this type of sign..

Some additional points:

Machining acrylic, whether by cutting or boring, tends to introduce micro fissures in the material, cracks that you may not even see. So does flame polishing, as mentioned, as well as heat bending.
Using drill bits made for acrylic minimizes micro-cracking around the perimeter of the hole. Drills made for wood or metal have the wrong-angled cutting edges for acrylic. They try to dig and gouge. A drill made for acrylic, on the other hand, will have more of a scraping effect. Also, it will have a sufficient rake angle behind the cutting edge to minimize heat.
A saw blade for acrylic is similarly designed. Usually recommended is a "triple chip" tooth arrangement with a rake of 0 to 5 degrees. Minimizing heat minimizes cracking.

Pinching acrylic sheet damages it, too. Again, it is unseen, but at the molecular level a tight fastener can create stress damage over time. So much so that, at some point, the pressure of normal cleaning can cause a corner to break off. This damage from prolonged pressure is called "creep." Commonly recommended is to finger tighten a fastener and then back off a quarter turn.
Hole diameter should be at least twice the diameter of the fastener's shank. The distance of holes from edges is recommended to be three times the diameter of the hole by some authorities, though Acrylite seems to recommend less as a minimum.
Countersunk holes and countersink fasteners should be avoided.

Cast acrylic is a better choice than calendered. It better resists heat from machining, and thus it resists micro-cracking better. Its polymer chains are longer, giving it greater sturdiness than calendered plastic
And cleaning without solvents is safer than using solvents. A solvent tends to find the micro cracks and make them worse.

https://www.acrylite.co/tech-briefs.html

Brad
Click to expand...

Interesting...

I saw somewhere there were special acrylic bits...guess I need to hunt them down. Thanks for the other nifty acrylic tips...


You forgot the "in Kansas City" part
 
E

equippaint

Active Member
Save a few bucks, step bits work well for us, blow right through, never crack and can use them on other material. The angle on regular steel bits can catch like brad said
 
R

rossmosh

New Member
In the future you could make these yourself and save a good bit of money. $175 or less gets you a 4x8 sheet. I'd also strongly recommend in the future specing the job out differently. You're not going to get 4 panels out of a 4x8 without undersizing the panels slightly. If I'm selling someone a 2x4, that means they're getting priced based on a 3 panel yield. By making it 23.75x47.75, I'm now getting 4 pieces per sheet which is going to result in a huge savings.

Saw Blade: https://www.amazon.com/Freud-80T-Pl...lic+saw+blade&qid=1564627548&s=gateway&sr=8-5

Drill Bits: https://www.mcmaster.com/acrylic-cutting-drill-bits or http://www.delviesplastics.com/p/Acrylic_Drill_Bit.html

For the edges, you want to sand with a ROS until about 5-600 grit and then finish with something like this: http://www.delviesplastics.com/p/Spiral_Buffing_Wheel.html

One last piece of advice, when drilling acrylic, you do not want to gradually go up in size with drill bits. You can do a small pilot hole and then go up to your 3/8" bit but if you try to gradually go up in size, you will crack the acrylic.
 
E

equippaint

Active Member
rossmosh said:
In the future you could make these yourself and save a good bit of money. $175 or less gets you a 4x8 sheet. I'd also strongly recommend in the future specing the job out differently. You're not going to get 4 panels out of a 4x8 without undersizing the panels slightly. If I'm selling someone a 2x4, that means they're getting priced based on a 3 panel yield. By making it 23.75x47.75, I'm now getting 4 pieces per sheet which is going to result in a huge savings.

Saw Blade: https://www.amazon.com/Freud-80T-Pl...lic+saw+blade&qid=1564627548&s=gateway&sr=8-5

Drill Bits: https://www.mcmaster.com/acrylic-cutting-drill-bits or http://www.delviesplastics.com/p/Acrylic_Drill_Bit.html

For the edges, you want to sand with a ROS until about 5-600 grit and then finish with something like this: http://www.delviesplastics.com/p/Spiral_Buffing_Wheel.html

One last piece of advice, when drilling acrylic, you do not want to gradually go up in size with drill bits. You can do a small pilot hole and then go up to your 3/8" bit but if you try to gradually go up in size, you will crack the acrylic.
Click to expand...
Stepping up is the way to go. A pilot and straight to 3/8 can be trouble.
Cutting this crap yourself and then sanding the edges will bury you in labor costs well in excess of buying it cut from a place that is setup to do it. If you do it all the time, buy the crap to do it, if you dont then buy it from the people that do.
 
Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
rossmosh said:
In the future you could make these yourself and save a good bit of money. $175 or less gets you a 4x8 sheet. I'd also strongly recommend in the future specing the job out differently. You're not going to get 4 panels out of a 4x8 without undersizing the panels slightly. If I'm selling someone a 2x4, that means they're getting priced based on a 3 panel yield. By making it 23.75x47.75, I'm now getting 4 pieces per sheet which is going to result in a huge savings.

Saw Blade: https://www.amazon.com/Freud-80T-Pl...lic+saw+blade&qid=1564627548&s=gateway&sr=8-5

Drill Bits: https://www.mcmaster.com/acrylic-cutting-drill-bits or http://www.delviesplastics.com/p/Acrylic_Drill_Bit.html

For the edges, you want to sand with a ROS until about 5-600 grit and then finish with something like this: http://www.delviesplastics.com/p/Spiral_Buffing_Wheel.html

One last piece of advice, when drilling acrylic, you do not want to gradually go up in size with drill bits. You can do a small pilot hole and then go up to your 3/8" bit but if you try to gradually go up in size, you will crack the acrylic.
Click to expand...

I dont have enough time or desire to do all that. It's worth a few hundred bucks to get the stuff in my hands ready to go... thankfully I've been blessed by having way more jobs come in then I can accept and I make more $ paying more to outsource than do that labor myself.
 
Big Rice Field

Big Rice Field

Electrical/Architectural Sign Designer
Putting on vinly copy and graphics first surface can cause shadowing on the frosted vinyl that is second surface. If you reverse cut the copy and logo and then apply it second surface and then apply the frosted crystal vinyl with the copy and logo weeded out with a 1/8" bleed it can be all second surface. Or, print revesred black logo and copy on the frosted vinyl.
 
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