Premanufactured Blade Signs

[nolanola]

I’ve noticed a growing availability of premanufactured circular blade signs on platforms like Etsy, including some that ship worldwide (e.g., from Turkey). Here in the U.S., I’ve seen companies offering clean-looking blanks ready for vinyl application, and others even providing prebuilt illuminated signs.

I can understand why this market exists—it solves a problem. Producing fully custom signs that end up looking similar can often be more expensive and time-consuming. These premanufactured options seem to offer a practical solution for cost-conscious clients or tight deadlines.

What are your thoughts on these products? Have any of you used them as part of your workflow, or do you see them as competition to custom signmakers?

 

[JBurton]

Have any of you used them as part of your workflow, or do you see them as competition to custom signmakers?

They are probably a PITA. Customer orders blank, wants you to decorate, or hang it, and the damn thing is falling apart in the crate. Ordering a sign off of etsy is the equivalent to getting an oil change from a guy holding a cardboard sign on the side of the road. Will it save money today? Absolutely! In the future?

 

[ProSignTN]

Look for that UL label.

 

[JBurton]

Look for that UL label.

Wait, were we talking about something illuminated? I missed that much. I'm not touching it at all. It's like the time a nail salon ordered letters from some sort of phillapeano nail kingpin that offered all of the supplies, including signage and the like online. It came in, no mounting holes, ACM backs, literally covered in LED's that said SAMSVMG, and 3 300 watt power supplies to drive the whole thing. To my knowledge, there is a limit to how many amps you can drive down at 12v, because eventually it will arc if shorted and could cause a fire. At any rate, we'd already quoted $5k for letters and install, but since the property owner required raceways, we had to price mounting this mess to raceways, with no mounting holes and no pattern. In the end out quote to utilize the ordered letters was $7k, and the customer begrundgingly picked up his boxes of letters and hasn't been heard from since. Here's a pic of the module spacing, it doesn't do justice to the density, but for reference, this is the cross stroke of an 18" capital A, with 3 rows of modules...

 

[Ryze Signs]

We installed a sign that came direct from China. It was front and back lit and the mounting studs were attached simply by gluing riv-nuts into the red acrylic backs. The glue started failing during install and we had to bring them back to the shop, tear them apart and re-assemble them using 3" 1/4-20 bolts and nuts. They sent two 300w power supplies. The letters were lit with rows of strip lighting. They are super bright, but the letters that are maybe 4x10 in footprint draw 500w. We charged the customer some for the extra work to fix it but we probably lost money on the job.

 

[DarkerKat]

We've used the George & Willy blade sign blanks before on a job (client already planned to buy from them, just asked us to add the vinyl & install) These were unlit blade blanks, and the product is nice honestly. I'm on the design side so, of course, I have a bias towards custom builds, but for quick turn around and when the shop is slammed, they are a decent option. The one word of caution was that they do still need to be permitted for exterior use, this came as a shock to the client. Best side of it, other than not spending in-house resources to produce something basic - it's a prefab product so the client just gets what they get, no jumping through hoops to "hide any mounting hardware" (a request we constantly get that complicates just about every install)