Erin, WI – Refurbish Aluminum Sign for Township | Commercial Sign Company

  This was fun.  One of the smaller municipalities in our area has a new administrator and one of the things he noticed was that the signs that were hung by the main streets coming into Erin were very badly beaten up.  By estimates, the last time they had any work done to them was about 15 years ago.  They definitely looked like it. The vinyl was cracked and peeling, the print had started to fade and the laminate had also failed.  This one really didn’t look too good.

When they brought the sign into our shop, we thought it would be a little interesting stripping and refinishing the sign.  Turns out that whoever did this sign knew exactly what they were doing.  To start with, the aluminum sign was primed and powder coated.  Even after years outside in the elements, the paint looked incredible. On one side, water had gotten behind the vinyl and pitted the aluminum.  Not too terrible.  We also found out pretty quickly the vinyl was not going to cooperate.  It started coming off in 1/2″ pieces.  This is going to take a while.  My production manager had an idea on how to remove the vinyl using a 4″ cardboard core and a heat gun.  It helped reduce the time to remove the vinyl by a substantial amount of time.  It was really cool.  Once the vinyl was off the sign, we started with an adhesive remover. We had to be careful because the adhesive remover can remove paint. So we tested the remover and it didn’t react so we were fine.  After three coats of adhesive remover and a plastic scraper, the sign finish was restored.  Just a very light sanding and the surface was ready for us to install the new prints.  Each side has a different print which is reflective of the Town’s heritage.

The prints we created were printed from an original photograph from 1973.  The photo had been scanned and saved digitally so we could play with it and resize as needed.  The addition of a slight green trim and the sign was ready to go. We also added a optically clear laminate and ran it through our laminator to compress the vinyl print and the laminate. This lessens the chance for the laminate to pull away from the print.

If you happen to have a sign that you would like us to refurbish please give us a call at 262.289.9481 or email us at info@optimumsignswi.com. We would love to help you with your project.