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Darla and I did a "what's it cost" article for the newest SignCraft magazine. In it we used a sheet of 3/4" MDO, then primed it, followed by an unexpected trim down using a small saw, followed by finish coats and final lettering.
We kept track of the time and materials required to get the panel ready, which is a substantial amount. Since the article came out, I have received a few emails wondering why I didn't just use a piece of .040 aluminum or some sort of prefinished sheet of the newer materials.
Here are some of my reasoning:
The local lumber yard stocks MDO for us, so we don't have to pay for shipping or store it here in the garage.
MDO can be cut with a variety of saws.
It is a relatively proven product.
Pre-Primed MDO has a questionable primer, and it seems to be the culprit for quite a few paint failures around her. We prefer to prime our own.
Additional Issues:
Cam Bortz is over on Letterville doing a "rant" about numerous failures of Omega Board. After a couple of years, signs he did with that material are now delaminating. He can expand here if he wants.
We don't have a storage area here for sheet materials, so I don't like stocking up on a bunch of different kinds and colors of materials.
We don't have special cutting equipment for aluminum and some of the other substrates such as alumacor.
I am not certain some of the new materials have been tested long enough in real world conditions for me to put a lot of labor into, only to find out the product was flawed. Many people swithced to Medex a long time ago, only to have failures. I fear the same for several of the new products.
In many of the cases, a surface has been applied to a plywood under substrate. You'd still need to seal and coat all the edges to get good outdoor results.
One person asked me why I paint the back sides at all? We just do.
Needless to say, I am not in love with MDO, but I am not 100% confident in the other options yet. I am curious to hear what other people are using and if they are happy with the materials and the additional finish/cut issues. Obviously, the person suggesting we use .040 aluminum has to then back up the thin sheet material with either another piece of plywood or several stringers spread across the posts. I assume people can paint over the top coats of the baked aluminum sheets, but I suspect there could be some adhesion problems there, too.
Mike Jackson
Mike Jackson / co-administrator Golden Era Studios
Vintage Ornamental Clip art
Jackson Hole, WY
Mike ,
you bring up some very valid reasons for using MDO.Being able to get it and cut it into what ever size you want is great.
I do alot of double sided blade signs that always have some sort of a shape to it.The designer also requeirs them to be 1 1/2 " to 2" thick and hanging bolts 3/4 of the way sandwiched through them.I have gone totally away from MDO because I haven't found anything that I can seal the edges with that will last more than 3 years including soaking the MDO in marine epoxy.Sign foam was good but if I don't install them they will be dented so now I am use 3/4 to 1' pvc sheets ,cuts easy ,easy to use and after Pat Mackel talked about making a sink wiith it and useing pvc glue I now use regular pipe pvc glue which is thick instead of the watery glue I bought and hated because it dryies before you can get the panel glued together.I am just now finishing up that sign and feel with the pvc,auto acrylic enamel paint finish it's going to be around a long time.One downside to the pvc is you have to prime it with speacial primer that sticks to it .I used a mathews white lacrel.
Roderick,
It has been about ten years since I purchased a piece of 3/4" thick PVC, and it seems to me it was close to $300 per sheet back then. Maybe I am wrong. I also recall that PVC can heat up and expand in the sun, causing another set of problems (I used strips about 4" tall and about 6' long on a directory one time). In regards to PVC vs MDO, both products require quite a bit of coating and prepping, so if you add in the high initial costs and next phases of primers and finish coats, the price of a 4 x 8 project sign would double. ($300 PVC vs $60 MDO) Additionally, PVC sheets spanning 8 feet is not that dimensionally stable, so the same project would require additional stringers of 2x4s or something similar.
We used PVC mainly for cut out letters where we didn't want to get so involved with sealed edges and didn't worry about expansion over only 12" to 18". It cuts great in a CNC router, of course. The sign in question is a basic real estate company project sign that goes out in a field for about six months until all the properties are sold.
The key to many of these materials is figuring out their strong features and defining their weak features.
Thanks for the comments,
Mike Jackson
Mike Jackson / co-administrator Golden Era Studios
Vintage Ornamental Clip art
Jackson Hole, WY
... (Due to the additional tooling necessary) most of the signs made using substrates other than MDO end up being either rectangular or square. My work is of a more "custom" nature and to me and all square corners are too boring and limited for MY clients.
...MDO is a "workhorse" that I've used since I started and never have had a failure with. Anything falls apart eventually and how long can ANY sign last without maintenience?
...I seal MDO edges with lacquer based sanding sealer, fill edge voids w. bondo or epoxy, then prime coat(s) and finish coat(s). This may seem like alot of effort to any sign maker in a hurry or working cheap, but it's worth it for the creative options this versitile material affords.
...Another plus is that I can burn MDO scraps in my wood stove. All of that scrap left over from the (aluminum, plastic etc.) other boards will end up in a land fill somewhere.
Mike,
Your right it is expensive but the blade signs i do use about half a sheet so the cost is not bad.The price of the signs are about 2,000.The primers are the same as anything .I love MDO when I can put a frame around it or in your case for short time uses.Maybe it's being on the coast but the MDO signs I've done by just sealing the edges and prime ,paint have not held up but three to five years and then the edges start to peel.
Billy Bob I'd be checking into what kind of glue they put in the MDO before I'd burn any more.Some areas like mine recycle wood.
When I live in an old step van (18 yrs old) at a ski resort in Mammoth Cal.
I worked at the sign shop at the moutain,I'd bring home all the left over masonite and burn it .Makes for a very hot fire and some of the wildest dreams i've ever had but I'm not sure the glues were good for me.
Also I don't seem to have a probelm with warping due to the glue up and size.
I too am an advocate of MDO. I like being able to cut it to any size and shape easily.
I like the look of an MDO sign over an aluminum sign because it has some thickness (albeit only 1/2, or 3/4", but thicker than aluminum)
I can get MDO locally for $60 a sheet, and it is top quality.
I seal the edges with latex caulking, and I paint with latex paint, and never had a failure.
I laminate HDU to MDO with West System epoxy, and have not had any problems in the last 7-8 years.
A lot of people have said "you will run into problems from expansion/contraction between two different materials", but I honestly don't think MDO, or any other veneer core laminated product expands or contracts much, that's why they are constructed in alternating layers, to prevent that.
I have noticed that different MDO's smell different when cutting them. the quality MDO I use has a "phenolic, or plastic" smell to it (from the adheasive I'm sure), and maybe those that are having problems with MDO are not getting a quality MDO, manufactured with quality adheasives?
I too have had relative success with MDO (relative to some other substrates) and I continue to use it for its ease of cutting, dimensional stability, and availability. I also make a point of specifically asking my supplier for their top-quality MDO; I see no point in saving 10 or 15 bux and having the stuff fail in two years. What aggravates me is that material supposedly made specifically for signs - such as Omega board - peeling apart in ways that I've NEVER seen in MDO.
I'm currently designing a 5' x 4' DF flat swinging sign, and as this is a somewhat special project I'm considering a number of material options. I'll let you know what I decide.
I used to buy my MDO from Royal Plylwood and ALWAYS specified that I wanted the sign grade. Since Commercal Sign Supply opened here in Long Beach, I buy from them, usually prepainted.
They did try one lot of factory preprimed MDO, and it turned out to be a disaster, many, many failures.
The 'big box' stores carry the lower grades of MDO, so longivity is always in question.
Hi again,
I continue to get e-mails about the "how much does it cost" article in SC. I find most of them interesting on several levels. Generally, each of them are well intended notes informing me there are better materials and easier ways to do that sign. Or, from another perspective, they are asking me why I did the sign the way I did.
Here are a couple of key issues:
One asked why I painted the back side at all.
Several have asked why I didn't use aluminum, explaining it is pre-painted and ready for vinyl. One went into detail about how to cut it and back it up for mounting on posts.
A couple asked me why I didn't apply a strip of maroon vinyl across the top on the panel (roughly 15" tall and running the length of the board)
One suggested they simply overlay their substrates with full sheets of vinyl and wrap it around all sides...they say they do it on vinyl banners and coroplast panels, too.
Accumulatively, it takes quite a bit of time to prep a panel on both sides and all edges. Knowing you can reuse a foam roller for several coats, the expense isn't too great, and of course that expense can be spread around to several jobs if you have more than one single 4x8 panel to prep at one time. That point alone makes one of the time sheet projects tough to review. In many cases, it takes only two or three minutes to actually apply a coat, followed by some drying time, but I usually fold in about 15 minutes per coat to the time ticket just to be sure.
As I think about some of the comments and suggestions, I reveal additional issues. We only have a 15" plotter and stock the punched vinyl in most colors we normally use. I don't keep any wide rolls of any color so that option doesn't come into play here, but I wonder how many people apply large sheets like that? We seldom do an underlayer of vinyl for a solid panel unless it makes a lot of sense from a materials/labor/time scenario and usually on strips of 6" or less. We cut 1/2" strips in repeat mode with 1/2" spaces to make borders because that is cheaper than taping off both sides with 3-M Fineline tape and painting with a brush. That makes sense to me. Covering sheets of colorplast with vinyl doesn't.
When we paint a background with paint, we leave ourself several options. We can apply additional paint and/or vinyl, but if you covered the entire background with vinyl, you really only have one choice. Right? Of course, we have both choices because we know how to do it either way. Once vinyl has been stuck to other vinyl for an extended period, it is very hard to remove, especially knowing you can't really use a heat gun on it because it will heat the background vinyl. That seems like a drawback. I can't image the amount of space and expense required to keep a 52" wide roll of each color of vinyl for background application, nor could I imagine looking forward to trying to apply a full sheet of it on a 4x8 panel.
We lost a 4x8 construction sign project a while back to someone who printed a large sheet of vinyl and then applied it to some thin aluminum. The contractors then had to screw it down to a piece of waferboard and support that with three posts. The job had an AutoCad architectural rendering, along with the normal verbage, plus a total of nine logos representing all the contractors, architects, engineers, and so forth. We would have done the rendering on our EDGE 2, then cut all the text with out plotter on vinyl. I told the contractor I would need vector logo files for each of the nine contractors to do the job for "Price A", otherwise it would be roughly $100 each for the logos I had to recreate on top of Price A. As I said, we lost the job. The sign maker did the job using a wide format printer that did a good job as far as I can tell from seeing it from the middle of the road as I drive by. I assume they just had to drop the bitmap logos into the large bitmap background without having to hand vectorize the logos.
This addition to the post not intended to knock any of the people who have written to me, but more to inform this group of what I am hearing. I am usually open to new "good" ideas, but right now I am not convinced the suggestions are going to take hold for Darla and myself.
Mike Jackson
Mike Jackson / co-administrator Golden Era Studios
Vintage Ornamental Clip art
Jackson Hole, WY
Earlier in this thread, I wrote about a project I'm working on currently. It's a 4'x5' swinging sign, rectangular with a re-curve bottom (a shallow "bell curve" and crown molding and cap on top. Installation is with 1/4x1 & 1/2" steel straps going up each side on the edge, through the cap and molding and sticking out the top, with holes to hang from the bracket.
I ended up building this with two sheets of 3/4" MDO, laminated together with epoxy, and sealed all around with epoxy. The only drawback is weight - I haven't put it on the scale, but I'm guestimating it weighs about eighty pounds. Fortunately I don't have to install this one.
Hi group: There is only one answer...mdo or hdu, I live on the oregon coast where we get 80" of rain a year, I seal my edges with acrylic latex primer (Benjamin Moore fresh start) finished with enamel I've been doing this for eons and dont have ANY delam problems. some years ago when medex first came out I thought AHA the stuff! and I scattered signs all up and down the coast. This all most put me out of business, the wetter the stuff got the thicker it got and then it would just wash away like wet cardboard, I'm staying with the tried and true material mdo/hdu some one mentioned the edges checking on mdo after 3or 4 years, everything deteriorates after a while, its out in the weather 24/7 if it lasted forever you'd be out of a job. as far as I'm concerned the aluminium laminate stuff is just for "no parking " signs...opinionated? yes! use what works and save yourself a lot of grief.
Bill
I continue to use MDO for the above stated reasons, however, there is another problem I've encountered with it.
At first I thought it was my problem, but as I travel away from coastal areas I see it elsewhere also. The problem seems to be a failure of surface paint right down to the MDO on places where there is a white background. I'm toying with the assumption that the ultraviolet penetration goes through the white and not other pigments.
What I've been doing is tinting my white primer and the first coat of abckground color and then putting the white on. I don't have these out long enough to determine anything yet.
As far as the edge sealing goes, we've been finding the best results with a couple coats of Titebond II prior tp priming.
Mendocino, California
"Where the redwoods meet the Sea"
Denver Chapter of the Letterheads