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March 05, 2021

Chester County, PA- Save Money and Get Noticed by Re-facing Your Channel Letters

Posted in: Industry News

Old faces of Green channel letters.

Channel letters provide many years of service without maintenance or failures making them the preferred choice for many businesses. With the introduction of LED illumination years ago the technology has really advance to extend the life of the units, reduce size, increased illumination and allowed for more options to tailor fit your signage needs. In addition to a much longer life span and reliability in comparison to fluorescent and neon illumination, LED lighting is much more energy efficient to the point where you will notice a difference in your operating costs.

Having said that, all materials and components have a service life at which point they deteriorate and eventually fail. The most obvious failure points is deterioration of the brightness level of the LED’s as well as power supply failures. But deterioration of the exterior finish of the sign because of UV exposure, weather elements like snow and ice and also deterioration from wildlife are possible over time. One component that also deteriorates are the faces of the sign. Channel letter faces consist of either white acrylic with vinyl applied to the face or a colored acrylic. Using colored acrylic limits the color availability, making translucent vinyl the leader in channel letter faces. Colored translucent vinyl has a much wider selection of colors in comparison to colored acrylic, but does not cover everyone’s color spectrum. In that case printing on white translucent vinyl allows for replication of nearly any color in the color wheel! As far as life goes, colored acrylic has the longest, then colored vinyl and lastly digitally printed vinyl.

Our production team hand laying the new vinyl for the new channel letter faces.

We recent completed a channel letter face replacement where the digitally printed vinyl on the letter faces had failed over years of exposure. The vinyl served its lifespan and over time eventually the adhesive as well as the vinyl deteriorated. Trying to remove vinyl from a channel letter face is usually not an option. The vinyl had deteriorated so much, removal would take more labor than replacing the face completely. Not to mention the acrylic and plastic trim caps turn brittle over time and would appear weathered after the vinyl replacement. A new letter face provides new acrylic, new vinyl and new trim caps. Due to sun exposure and weathering all faces require updating in order to ensure color matching.

Letters with vinyl ready for border cut and trim caps to be applied.

The customer did not have the original art files which prevented us from cnc router cutting of the vinyl or acrylic faces. While original art files are preferred, if you don’t have them no need to worry! In order to replicate the faces we removed the old letters and used them as a template to hand route new acrylic faces. The customer has a specific Pantone color they wanted to match which was not available in acrylic or colored vinyl so we digitally printed a translucent vinyl sheet of the color desired then laminated the print to provide additional UV resistance as well as scratch resistance. Our team laid the vinyl by hand and trimmed the vinyl to the acrylic face. They then applied the trim cap with an acrylic adhesive and re-installed the new letters.

As you can see in the pictures, you the transition to new letters makes the sign bold and helps it pop again!

New faces applied to existing cabinet providing new looking sign!

If potential customers see a storefront that has a weathered sign that has the vinyl peeling off or is faded and dull, it reflects on the image of your business. It may even be turning away potential business. We will work with you to ensure your channel letter signs are beautiful and functional. Replacing the faces proves to be a highly economical solution to elongating the life of your channel letters!

If you want more information about refreshing your sign, give the experts a call at Paramount Signs for a free consultation.

Remember “getting you noticed is Paramount


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