CABINET SIGNS

Recent technology has solved the age-old problem of a backlit sign looking fantastic when illuminated at night but looking slightly washed out in the daylight.

For many years, the sign industry struggled with the problem until a new technology called Color-White-Color three pass printing was invented. The more advanced large format UV printers have this technology.

All three of our large and grand format printers use Color-White-Color technology for day/night sign faces. Like the name suggests, the technology prints a layer of your design, then a white layer, and then your design a 2nd time. This produces a sign face that is stunning and vibrant when backlit at night or front lit during the day.

By printing Color-White-Color in reverse on a clear acrylic face, it creates your sign face on the back side of the acrylic. So when your face is placed in the extrusion (sign cabinet), it has the acrylic itself in direct contact with the weather, sun, and wind. The sign face is printed on the side of the acrylic that is inside the sign cabinet.

This gives your sign the best protection from the elements and ensures the longest life possible.

Pressure sensitive translucent vinyl is used in many sign face applications. The design is cut from a single color of vinyl sheeting with our vinyl plotter.

There limitless styles and colors of vinyl to choose from and depending on your chosen design this method may be the best option for your application. Sometimes, this method has limits when printing multiple color designs.

However, we can print full-color designs on clear vinyl with our UV Printers and adhere the design to your sign face. In those applications, the prints mount on the outside of the sign face and they are in direct contact with the weather elements, but they are designed to have long-term durability even though they are in direct contact with the weather. Prior to Color-White-Color technology, this was the best method, but now it really depends on your specific design as to what will be the best option for your sign face.

Pan formed Faces are made of acrylic but instead of the acrylic sheet being flat the sheet is heated to the point where it is pliable and then the edges are bent to allow the entire face to protrude out approximately two inches from the sign cabinet itself. Besides for the edges being bent 90 degrees, the rest of the sign surface is flat.

This sign face is usually used for larger signs because this face can withstand higher wind loads due to the bent edge design.

The drawback with this type of sign face is that it is not possible to manufacture the signs on our flatbed printers, so we are unable to print Color-White-Color faces. The advances in Flex Face Signage makes it a more logical choice for most oversized sign faces.

Like pan formed faces, embossed faces require a thermoforming process.

The difference is that instead of just bending the edges of the acrylic sheet, the acrylic is also bent around lettering or designs that were previously cut out separately with our CNC Router to be used as molds for the thermoforming. So, the edges, the lettering and the designs all protrude from the face of the sign cabinet.

This method has been very popular in the past, but it is difficult to make multi-colored designs using this method. It is possible; but it is more economical to produce intricate and multi-colored designs with the more advanced technology that now exists.

The primary purpose for both the pan formed and embossed sign faces has been to strengthen the faces for maximum wind resistance making them great choices for oversized sign faces in the past. Since the aesthetic reasons to have a protruding sign face is usually lost when viewing the sign face from any distance, the advances in Flex Face Signage has made it a better choice in most of these applications.

These faces are not as common, but they have some very exciting applications. We can cut any design in reverse from aluminum using our CNC Router.

The aluminum sheet, with your reverse design, is then placed in the sign cabinet as your sign face and acrylic is then mounted on the inside of the aluminum sheet which allows your design and lettering to show thru during day and night applications. When the sign is illuminated at night, the light shines thru the acrylic and looks fantastic.

The color contrast between the aluminum sheet color and your acrylic color makes your design stand out during the day as well.

These sign faces are similar to the stencil cut faces but the acrylic backs are specially cut on our router to allow the acrylic to protrude thru the reverse cut metal face so the letters actually stand off from the flat aluminum background.

They actually look like small channel letters mounted on a sign cabinet. It is a unique method of producing sign faces and can give Customers’ endless options to uniquely brand their business.

Flex Face Sign Faces are made with a unique banner type of flexible material called PanaFlex manufactured by 3M. The material is extremely durable and is specially treated to allow long-term durability, unusual wind resistance, and great UV (Sun) resistance.

The material is made to be backlit for illuminated sign face applications and looks equally stunning during daylight front lit applications.

Our equipment can print 10 foot wide rolls, so it can be used to make a sign face 10 foot wide by any length without a seam, and we can create faces up to 22 foot wide by any length using our state of the art Miller Hot Air Welding System. This is a big advantage over acrylic which seldom comes larger than a 5-foot by 10-foot sheet.

These signs are most commonly used with very large cabinets; usually above 5x10 ft. The benefits over acrylic faces inlcude:

• Allows for a large face with no seams
• Absorbs very high wind speeds because the face has the flexibility to sway in extremely high winds
• Weigh less making installation easier and less expensive
• Less expensive than a comparable sized acrylic face