who would make a 3d sign?

Check with Gemini. I had them cast some coat of arms and they looked pretty good.
they were for a sub-division and were 24x24, not super detail though.

 

I remember a thread where someone 3d routed a coat of arms and then flatbed printed directly to it...I will try and search for it

 

It depends on the material .... plaque or HDU?

 

Anything dimensional will most likely require a vector file. I had someone request several military coat of arm files two weeks ago. It was another sign company. There was a ton of fine detail. It could be done, but man it was going to be expensive. On the conservative side I estimated each piece at close to a $1,000. and none of them were larger than 2'x2'

 

PM sent!

 

Let's see a pic. It might be possible to hand carve them. In fact... it might be better to hand carve them.

 

I know for my router it requires a vector file to do any dimensional sign or carving. Just the way it is on that front I would imagine. At least with my machine.

 

cant it be done from a well thought out grayscale image?

 

One one my customers customers said they just bought from gemeni direct. Gemeni needs to choose who they want to sell to till then then can kiss my a** and my business goodbye.

Remember folks if you and your customer can buy from them they are a competitor.


PS I will follow up and pass along how a retail customer came to buy them. Looks like a few online site that look just like gemini and even have gemini in the company name and web addy can buy direct.

 

my uncles uncles uncle said they don't do that... in fact of all the wholesale providers in this industry, I consider then to be at the top in that regard, so perhaps you should prove your 3rd hand information before spouting like fact here...

 

I would be looking for a but more proof before calling out a well established company on a public forum. Don't get me wrong, Gemini has their issues (lead time, QC issues) but i've never heard of them selling direct to end users. Yes they will sell to construction companies and architects, which my be your customer, but that is not the same as selling to the end user.

 

absolutely!

that's how I made THIS sign (along with several others)

 

+1, except we've never had an issue with their lead times or quality either, they are a top notch vendor and are very strict about who they sell to.

Gabagoo, try calling up Dan Sawatzky, this sounds like it may be up his alley, although I don't know if the budget will allow for his work. He's in Canada at least.

 

To be fair, I think alot of the issues we have been having have to do with the fact that they pulled all their manufacturing plants out of Canada, so their lead times have suffered for us. The QC problems have all been fixed very quickly and overall we are very happy with them.

 

At Sign Design and Fabrication we recently created a coat of arms for a customer that wanted more of an artsy spin to match the artwork they provided. We have manufactured standard coat of arms in the past, however this piece was hand tooled to create the textures and odd shapes represented in their proof and requests. We aren't located in Canada, but we do ship there, and we can create just about anything.



Check us out in the merchant member section, visit SignDesignandFabrication.com, or send me a PM!

 

I may have to eat my words but as I said the Restaurant owner showed up at his shop with brand new letters with LED's installed in a Gemini box. The Restaurant owner was not clever enough to put them up so the went to a sign company and get them to put them on " one of those raceway thingys"

He may not have got them direct from Gemini but with hundreds of resellers and internet outlets they are still hurting real sign shops.

I have phone calls in to see who/how the restaurant guy got them and post my result.

 

This sounds like a piece of cake for us. If possible I would like a vector file if it is available - or else the customer would have to pay us to create one from scratch.

Creating dimensional projects is all we do.

-dan