Wednesday, 06 Apr 2016 18:06 GMT

Rigid Material Innovation - Part 1

Sheet materials have evolved to the point where they are saving producers’ time, money, and helping them develop new markets. Mark Godden takes a look at some of the latest products available

The quiet revolution

In the beginning, it was what you might today call ‘a simple sign’; the sort of sign everyone who makes signs sells once or more in their lives. The sort of sign, that does no more than put a mark in the sand for its owner and that does nothing much for his business beyond saying where it is situated. Anyone reading this far could have produced it with their eyes closed, all the while thinking about the signs they would rather be making.
 
All that said, and among others of its sort, it was well designed and borderline-attractive. The client who had commissioned and purchased it was delighted with his buy, and the chain link fence it partially obscured when it was installed, that looked all the better for being partially obscured.

Looking more closely at the sign, it comprised a white painted board—a sheet material of origin unknown, and it was decorated with applied vinyl lettering.

Some rudimentary ‘graphics’ cut from black vinyl rooted the sign in its pre-digital print era. The edges of the board had a mitred frame covering them and there was some evidence of a sealer being used too. Brass fixings were attached to the rear of the sign and that had also been painted.

The sign had a story beyond that told by the graphics. Its life began as a sheet of plywood; it was ply of a particularly good quality, about 18mm thick. Too big to be of use in its delivered format, the ply sheet was carefully measured, marked, measured again, and then cut using a suitable saw. The edges of the released panel were then carefully examined and a few little voids were then filled with a plastic putty.



Sign blanks once came ready to sand, paint, and sand again rather than ready to letter



Next day, both faces of the ply blank were sanded and then wiped with a very slightly damp rag before having a sealer applied. The sealed faces were then sanded and wiped again, and again, and one more time with a very fine paper.

Next, the blank was painted before being ‘de-nibbed’ with a rubbing paper, painted again, and again. Three coats later, it looked smooth, unblemished, and very glossy.

The board’s edges were next carefully sealed before being framed in a nicely mitred surround. The fixings were attached. Then it waited until all the nasties in the paint and sealer had evaporated away. Then it was decorated with the lettering and graphics, and was installed. Rinse and repeat.

Back then, each and every time you want a sign applied to a rigid board, you had first, to make the rigid board. There was a time, and it is not so long ago, when sign-makers did not have the convenience of ready to use sign-blanks or a deep reserve of sheet materials to select from. Everything had to be subject to the sign-maker’s craft.

A better way…

Today it is different. Today’s sign-makers can call any of a number of suppliers and select from a huge range of ready to letter sheet materials. Some of those materials are even suitable for direct printing so relieving the sign-maker from even more of the process steps involved in making presentable signs using rigid sheet materials.

Today’s sign-makers can call any of a number of suppliers and select from a huge range of ready to letter sheet materials”

 
Paul Sprackman is a sign-maker to the core. Bristol, which has a big signing legacy, including Universal Components and Spandex, among a few others, was home to Cabot Signs, a progressive company born in the era when neon dominated and long before the possibility that a sign might ever be made with a computer’s intervention was even considered.

At the height of its influence, Cabot Signs’ craftsmen would have been transforming Perspex acrylic sheeting into fabricated shop fascia signs, channel lettering, and other very skilfully derived fabrications, and working with less co-operative materials such as stainless steel and other metals.

Today, Sprackman serves as a director at Bristol-based Voodoo Designworks, headquartered near Aztec West. Voodoo is a product of sign-making’s computerised production era and the beneficiary, like many, of working in an age where the availability of modern sheet material has transformed sign fabricating and manufacturing.

“Sign-makers have always been a hands-on breed but then they’ve needed to be,” Sprackman says, adding: “Sign-making was, and remains, a craft and although computers have revolutionised manufacturing, that eye for layout and instinctive feel for typography really still distinguishes us among ourselves. As for the materials at our disposal these days, the choice is amazing.

“Looking at plastics, all you need to know about Perspex, or acrylic, is that it’s been around since the 1930s and we still use it today. It’s a thermoplastic so you can heat it and bend it and it keeps its shape. It’s colourful, you can route it or saw it and it’s easy to glue and make into structural fabrications.”

Sprackman adds: “At Voodoo, we’re big consumers of sheet materials. We have a great Tekcel router in the workshop and there’s always something on its bed that’s being worked on. We deal with Perspex of course, wood, and metal. Solid and foamed PVC goes through here in great volume and we’re big fans of aluminium composites like Alupanel too.


Foamed PVC and Print—space transformed—by Voodoo DesignWorks for Unilever



“Voodoo is a design-led concern so we have a fair bit of agency contact. They, and customers in general if I think about it, tend to prize materials for very different reasons than we do. A sign seen through a customer’s eyes, or a designer’s, is all about finish and ultimate impact. We’re concerned with structural integrity, durability and environmental matters.

“With the range of sheet materials on offer today and with the technology we have to convert those materials, our biggest challenge is in communicating to the market the extent of what’s possible, particularly from a very creative concern like Voodoo. The market tends to ask for what it may be familiar with but we can do so much more.”

More choice

Sign-makers then have a choice; there are a lot of great materials around now and the technology to work with them. So, while it might be tempting to spend hours bringing up a wooden panel to the required standard or spray painting a meticulously cleaned sheet of metal, arguably better ways of getting to much the same ends are readily available.

Take a mix of PVC polymers, pour said polymers into a rather clever machine, add some Swiss air to them, and then pop out sheets of Foamex. Take the whole plot to some other jurisdiction and the process yields you a foamed PVC board in a range of qualities, all of which can, and often do, substitute for sheet materials that once needed hours of tedious preparation.

Foamed PVC does not care much if it gets wet and you should also not care if it does. It is a plastic so it does not matter. If you want a white board, you deal in white foamed PVC; it is dyed in the mass so the key colour goes all the way to the core of the material. It is very light, given its substance and density, and is pretty strong too. You can saw or route it, you can bond it, you can print it directly in a UV printer, you can laminate it with printed vinyl, and you can even stick blue letters and very rudimentary cut graphics on it if you need to.


Foamed PVC is available in a range of dyed-in-the-mass colours that add to its versatility



Set in the time of ply and in its application context, foamed PVC sheeting was as revolutionary as the labour saving hardware, such as wide-format inkjet printers, that are used by most signs and graphics producers today. Today, you can shout a range of names out—Palite, Foamex, Forex, Foamalite among others—and something approximating foamed PVC will appear. Quality varies and that is why brands are there to support your buying decision. Do not dive straight for the cheapest sheet—it is so expensive in the longer term.

Don’t dive straight for the cheapest sheet—it’s so expensive in the longer term”


In terms of application space, foamed PVC has proved to be a catalyst for creative imaginations everywhere. Black-pool-based Links Signs and Graphics recently used it to provide a sound surface for the subsequent application of printed graphics. Adhered to a wall’s surface using a ‘No-Nails’ like product, the applied sheet imparts a smooth, coloured surface that is clean, warm to the touch, and attractive. Adding further to the plusses, the foam PVC-based remedy to the problem of an unsound surface in parts costs considerably less than taking the surface back to brick and covering it with plaster.

Foamed PVC is often used as a substitute for more costly materials when there is a need for lettering that has a dimensional feel to it but the available budget will not stand the price of exotic materials. Routed, often painted or laminated with vinyl, foamed PVC does a great job of looking good on stand-offs and it is very easy to work with.

Sheet materials have also changed out of all recognition. The revolution here though is not as widely taught as hardware’s, and it is not dripping with the same heroics that follow print technology around. Sheet materials have contributed though; they exist to save tedious labour, have made the sign and display market bigger, have some wondrous physical and chemical properties, and have helped pioneer new ways of making signs.

Fantastic plastic

No discussion involving sheet materials used in the sign and allied industries would be inclusive if one of its key players, Polymethyl Methacrylate, were not mentioned. Better known by brand names such as Perspex and Plexiglass, this most versatile and attractive thermoplastic has been around in one form or another since the 1930s. It is available today in a range of highly evolved forms and serves an even wider range of amazing applications.

Acrylic sheet behaves in many key respects like glass. It, dependent upon its design, has high transmission properties, refracts light, and is available in lots of useful sizes and thicknesses. Its behaviours, for example, when light is introduced into one of its edges, are such that the light will bounce around endlessly. Interrupt the light with a scratch or some other class of marking, and the light will spill out brightly and apparently unpowered by any visible source.

Perspex sheet in the UK is represented by Perspex distribution. The range of materials has grown from the handful of colours originally available and now encompasses functional variants that possess novel and attractive value-added features. These features encourage creative converters and producers to take the product to new application sectors and markets. Perspex Secret Sign is a good example.


Perspex shares many of the most valued characteristics of glass



Perspex sheet, that is designed to do so, does a great job of diffusing the light source that is positioned behind it. Seen in the daytime, and in ambient lighting conditions, Perspex radiates its key colour in all its glossy glory. At night and viewed in conditions where the material is backlit, substantially the same colour is transmitted so the sign is able to work around the clock.

Perspex Secret Sign works differently, and brilliantly. In daylight conditions and again in ambient light, Perspex Secret Sign is an attractive matt black in colour. The very same material though, when backlit and viewed in dark conditions, radiates a second colour—white for example, totally transforming the sign for its night job. To echo Voodoo Designworks’ Sprackman again: “…one of the challenges is letting the market know what modern materials and technologies make possible”.


Flame polishing gives Perspex a glassy edge. Pictured: Voodoo DesignWorks for Cadbury



Any material with a legacy as long as Perspex is going to have picked up line-extensions and variants along its career path and in the case of Perspex there are many in additions to Secret Sign. Bringing the Perspex story right up-to-date is Perspex Spectrum LED.

LEDs have risen to a position of prominence in sign illumination and present specialist challenges in terms of extracting the best lighting performance from the materials they are used with. Those challenges have been met by Perspex Spectrum LED.

The technology features re-engineered diffusion characteristics that better diffuse the pinpoint source of very bright light that LEDs output. Optimised for white LEDs’ spiked and skewed colour spectrum, Perspex Spectrum LED also helps eliminate hotspots as part of its baked-in design so yielding bright, evenly illuminated results. Colours too are rendered in natural tones reflecting the base colour of the product used.

Perspex Spectrum LED is a product that yields attractive signs but actually accomplishes much more—as do many modern sheet materials if you look beyond the obvious. Signs can now be made using a light source that is more compact, and more durable and enduring than the traditional lighting technologies it displaces. The light source is easier to deploy and to power. Signs can also be constructed that are slimmer than traditional fabrications.

Something for every need

Sign-makers turn to modern rigid sheet materials for all sorts of reasons of course and among them is the need for a low-cost, practical substrate that can serve the need when producing a temporary sign, or something used for a short-term promotion. Often, the indicated choice is fluted polypropylene material. Among the best known is Correx, handled in the UK by Antalis.

Correx, and products like it, are made from easily recycled plastics and have an engineered construction not unlike corrugated cardboard on the one and nothing at all like it on the other. In either case, though, two skins either side of a fluted core give the material an inherent stiffness in either axis and this is accomplished with a relatively low all up weight.
 
Fluted boards are available in basic colours and can be screen printed, printed direct by UV digital printers or they can be laminated with printed or coloured vinyl. In terms of delivering area-per-pound-invested, there is no denying the appeal of this most basic of sign-making staples. In terms of enduring results, it weathers well and hangs on in there in all conditions.

Properly designed signs and indeed lots of other products made with fluted board can look anything but entry level in terms of pricing. Unfortunately though, too many people have seen one too many poorly made panels stapled to a piece of batten and stuck in the ground to have much faith in the product’s considerable potential.

With any and all sheet materials existing in a wide band of pricing, questions will be asked regarding what differentiates those at the higher priced end of the spectrum from those bumping along the bottom. ‘Quality’ is the explanation that is usually offered and the reality is that this covers a wide range of possible specifics.
 
The fact is, there is a risk attached to using the cheapest products. Their quality may not be taken as being acceptable to a customer, they may fail sooner and they may not look as good, but stress ‘may’. A good test of resolve is to look at the money saved there in the palm of your hand and price your reputation and the value of keeping a happy customer against it and, from that point, it is your decision. The flip side of the coin is not just to expect more from the premium brands—make sure you get it too.

Matters environmental have followed sheet materials to source and manufacturers of all premium branded products have taken steps to improve not only the products they sell, but also the ways they make them.

Buy a premium sheet material from a credible quality distributor and you will be assured that the selling concern is doing all within its power to minimise its impact on the environment too. You do not have to forsake reliable materials for unknown concoctions of fresh air and chewed daylight—if you deal in quality materials from quality suppliers. In accumulated terms you will be getting great product, responsibly made and sold, and your customer will be getting a good deal too.

Not so heavy metal

Polyethylene is very versatile and it is among the most improved and evolved of all the industrial plastics.

O Factoid: Polypropylene is used by the tonne but much of it never sees the light of day. O


Tonnes of it are used in sign production these days but much of it never gets to see the light of day. That is because it is sandwiched during its manufacture between two sheets of thin aluminium and sold into the market as aluminium composite sheet.


With a range of finishes and functions, aluminium composites are where the industry turns for versatility


 
As with other sheet materials, there are many brands from which to choose. Among the best known is the Alupanel range from Perspex distribution. Aluminium composites are prized for their remarkable rigidity, enduring quality and relatively lightweight. They machine easily and have superb finishes that yield beautiful, high quality results in skilled hands.

One notable product in the Alupanel range is the Ultrawhite Digital variant. This product shares all the key features of basic composites but has a coating, protected during shipping, which is expressly designed to receive UV print well. The bright white coating provides a perfect field for print and yields highly vibrant, impactful results, and great resolution and fidelity.

Aluminium composites are among the toughest of all the materials used in sign-making. Dimensionally stable and strong enough to bear loads in properly fabricated structures, these remarkable materials can be used to make flat folded assemblies, and even routed sign trays so eliminating the need for supporting extrusions and other
components.


Routed composite trays are considered a better way to fabricate. Voodoo DesignWorks produced this signage for coffee chain, Costa



Today’s modern sheet materials can be used in concert and become more than the sum of the parts used. A routed composite tray with LED illumination installed and the right acrylic let into routed apertures does not just look great and perform brilliantly. It replaces an expensively fabricated aluminium enclosure, complex electrics, and fret cut plastics in a considerably more costly and bulky assembly.

Sign-making has moved on. Quietly but surely, modern sheet materials have taken the art to new ground”


Sign-making has moved on. Quietly, but surely, modern sheet materials have taken the art to new ground. New materials have helped develop new markets and new application possibilities. Today’s sheet materials are no less revolutionary than the hardware the industry uses to work with them.

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