I'm not big on velvet or velour backings on plaques. It just isn't anything that I care for personally. These are going in a special private school, so with lighting and all, I want to make sure I use a material that doesn't have any fading issues, or looks old before its time. The aluminum/brass in purple has too much shine for this project, and doesn't come in big enough sheets to fit in the frame, although I may be able to figure something out with dividers.

David - I'll be doing the perp. plates for a long time to come, but after setting up the initial plaques, and cutting out 20 years of plates, I'd probably still have about 7 sheets left! Dividing it up if anyone else wants a purple reverse matte material is an idea. Don't know if other people would be interested, but it would be a beautiful color and with the reverse, you could be creative with the lettering colors. We'll see what George has to say and then I'll figure out how much I can use of that amount.

Cindy

Cindy,
The fastest way to produce this would be to use clear/clear and reverse engrave it. Paint fill the lettering and then color sand with 2000 fine grit automotive paint sandpaper, using plenty of water. Then spray with a custom automotive paint. Only use hardener in what you need or have the paint shop spray them. You can make as few or as many as your customer needs with off the shelf products and no special orders and minimums. I have done many custom show car signs this way. Plan on at least three to five days from start to finish for each completed order.

Mike,
Oops, I did not read all the way through to the end of the posts. That is a great way to do it. Nice to see the out-of-the-box thinking.

Mike,
I tried the paint the clear first then engrave and fill, but it was harder to remove blemishes. By engraving the detail first, then paint filling and then finishing the background color, I was able to completely cover the back with that solid color and did not have to cover it. This to me was important because there was always three or more colors, and they tended to leave shadows when the sign was a stand alone with lighting sometimes brighter from the back.

Mike,
I do not have the chance to get to the sign I did last, I believe it is in CA. with the car. I did all my engraving first. I masked to paint specific colors as closely as I could to reduce clean up. When all the paint fill was inspected for see through, I always sprayed to coats, I allowed about two hours to dry and then color sanded the surface to be sprayed for final color. Sanding was done from top to bottom on the last sign to reduce the chance of visual imperfections when viewing the sign. When I got the finish as smooth and stroke free from sanding, I sprayed it with custom paint that matched the car it was for. It was metallic green. I have used both laqour and catalized enamel and both seem ok. Magenta for some nuclear signs I did seemed to be my hardest color to spray. I usually spray two coats for the back, then depending on the application sent it out as is or color sanded, spray an extra coat and then sent out to customer. All my finished signs that I had to paint all went out completely color sanded to the original core so that there was no color outside the engraved boundery. I also never did any finish sanding with a grit less than 1000 grit before painting. Hope that helps a little more to visualize my process I was using. I will try to locate some old projects, but because I do not really engrave anymore, I have lost touch with alot of those custom sign customers.

Hi David,

Sorry for the delay in replying. We just got new web filtering software here at Rowmark and had to work through some of the bugs, so web access has been a little limited. But all is welll now.

There are really two answers to your question. If you are looking for a custom product (as in a color combination that we don't offer as a standard product) out of existing colors, there is typically a 5 sheet minimum. For example, if you wanted a red/gold LaserMax (which combines a cap and core that we arleady produce) then 5 sheets.

Now, if you're looking to do an entirely new color, that involves a little more in terms of color matching, etc. But, yes, we can do that.

Right now, it's about 10:40am EDT. The guy who I would need to ask about that is in a meeting until 11:00am. When he gets out of the meeting I'll get a more difinitive answer for you!

Just so you don't get to jealous of our weather here in Ohio...today, sunny and 75. Tomorrow, snow flurries and 39. Gotta love April in the Midwest!

Thanks,
George

Hi Dave (and others),

Well, the short answer for a custom color matched sheet is that it ain't cheap. Typically, we ask for 300 sheets for a custom color match with an $80 color match fee and a 4-8 week turnaround.

The reason for that is that a custom color match requires Rowmark to get a custom color concentrate (hence the fee) and do a special extrusion run (hence the large minimum and turnaround). I wish it were as simple as dropping a new color into the extruder and cranking out some material, but it's quite an involved process.

The best bet is to either find a color that's close in the Rowmark line and order some custom combined sheets from exisiting colors or, as others have suggested, back fill a clear sheet. Honestly, these options are much more cost effective.

I hope this helps!

Thanks, all!
George

Thanks to all for your input on getting the purple reverse material in to reality. Thanks George for your information - I think even 300 sheets would be more than people want to split! I'll probably go with the clear and paint it myself.

Ron & Mike - on smaller runs I usually paint the entire sheet of clear with the color I want for the background, let it dry and then engrave through this color and paint fill the letters. From what I was reading, you both would do the opposite. Am I reading correctly? Just out of curiosity, why do you do the lettering first and then do all the sanding etc, then paint the background color? Don't you find that more labor intensive? I haven't had any trouble with painting the background color first - no peeling while engraving the letters or anything like that.

I like the idea of having a body shop paint the purple though. They can give me the real royal purple I'm looking for.

Thanks for all the ideas.
Cindy

Hi George, was wondering if you have ever thought of running a poll to see what colors or color combinations engravers would like? I know one I wish for is that you carried a heavy frosted reverse engraved material. I have to buy your UM clear/clear - sandblast it then engrave it and color fill - which is a pain to clean up after the rough sand finish. Interior decorators love the 'frosted glass' look around here (I think of the old doctor offices windows when I see these.).

To keep this on Cindy's thread.....you really do need more purple selections. There are many schools using purple and our choices are few.

My 2 cents

Zona
Zona's Engraved Creations

Hi Zona,

Thanks for the feedback! I know that the frosted look is hard to achieve through extruded plastic, but maybe there is a way to do that through some sort of foil. I will pass that on to our engineering department and keep you posted of their response.

As for the purple materials, do you mean more shades of purple or more purple color combinations? If it's the latter, we've added a few more color combinations in our new Varsity Collection, including Purple/Yellow (which is fairly popular). You can see the colors we are offering in that line at http://www.rowmark.com/laser/Varsity_Collection/VarsityCollection.asp
(if the link does not work, it's under the products section/laserable).

Also, if there is a specific color combination you're looking for, ask you distributor. Nine times out of ten we can make a combination out of exisiting components, and it's typically a 5 sheet minimum for that kind of an order. So if, say, you need a purple over gold, we can do that with no problem.

I hope this helps, and I think a survey is a good idea. I'll bring that up at our next Marketing Team meeting in two weeks. Maybe we could do that online somehow.

If you have any other questions, give me a shout! Let me know what else I can do to help...and thanks for using our products :-)

George

Cindy:

My process is to paint the back and then engrave the back and color fill it.

Sometimes it's hard to get the color you want on a reverse engraved color fill and it may be better to mask the front, engrave and color fill. Just depends on how much pop you want the engraved color fill to have.

I would like to see a sample of Ron's process as it sounds very interesting.

Good question Dave. I was only thinking of the purple in the satins and not whether that could transfer as a color to the clear.

Hmmm, I'll be interested in seeing the answer from George.

Cindy