Sign Builder Illustrated June Cover – KDF’s – Callahan’s Build

Thank you Sign Builder Illustrated Magazine once again  for putting KDF on the cover featuring the Callahan’s Project!  What a fun project this was. Click below for the article.

Sign Builder - June 2015

Published with permission from KDF Custom Graphics. Source.

Let the Wrapping Begin! KDF Custom Wrap Sign

The shop is all abuzz with the news!

We’re very excited  to announce we have completed the construction of our new wrap area! We’ve tripled our capacity and we’re ready to wrap!

Of course now we need a sign for the 18′ walls and you know a small sign won’t do.  So… we went with a 6′ x 7′ footprint.  Nanette came up with a real nice design that we could work with to make a printable dimensional sign.

Here is the original design

Wraps Sign DesignOnce Rad setup the file for production it was time to cut the foam. We started by cutting the elements of the sign out of simple white gator foam of varying thicknesses. 2″, 1″ and 1/2″.
012 Into our new paint shop and all the elements are painted. this is a waterborne paint system so its quick dry – all the parts are back out to the printing department for flatbed printing on our Oce’ 350.

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Now its time for assembly. All the elements are on the table – screwed and glued.

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This is basically one long day of work to get this cut, painted,  printed  and up on the wall.

This gives you a good idea of how big this bad boy is. Greg is ready to wrap!

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Published with permission from KDF Custom Graphics. Source.

Skallywag promotional video

Our client in Trinidad asked us to do up a short video of the project to aid them in promoting it as it is built. Because many of the big pieces are already shipped we decided to focus on the wonderful characters that will populate Skallywag Bay.

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.

Looking back ten years

I was looking through old posts on this blog and came across one I posted five years ago. It was reviewing my decision of five years before that about the jump to purchase a MultiCam CNC router and EnRoute software. It also meant learning to use new materials such as Precision Board. Now ten years later those words still ring true.

One of the biggest questions I had as I researched the purchase of a CNC router five years ago was ‘Would a CNC router pay off for our shop?’ A MultiCam was a lot of money. I had to think about it carefully. I had decided that if I was to get a router I wasn’t going in half way. Initially buying a basic machine and then upgrading to a better router later didn’t make much sense to me. That would mean paying much more for the machine I really wanted. I wanted the best from the start. I was either in or out.
We weren’t the typical sign shop. We simply do not do production work. I contacted many, many sign shops as I looked for information. It was a no brainer that a router made sense for anyone doing production work. I discovered that most sign shops out there used their routers as fancy jigsaws. They pushed lots of work through their machines and it was profitable for them in a hurry. Our needs were very different. My intention was to create custom, dimensional signs. I had no intention of simply finding work to keep the machine busy, although many others I talked with had paid for their routers in this fashion. I wanted to use our router to help me continue to do the dimensional work I loved. I just knew it could speed things up for me and make me money.
It didn’t take me long to figure out the machine could do things much, much faster than I ever could by hand – and much more accurately too. I discovered our MultiCam could easily do things five times faster as a minimum – including the time it took me to create the files before the machine was set in motion. Best of all it could do this work while I did other things. We financed our machine over four years figuring it would take us two years to pay it off. We played it safe. The reality is the machine paid for itself in less than one year.
Purchasing our MultiCam router was the equivalent of hiring two full time, experienced and trained employees once everything was considered. Only this machine easily works five times faster than even I could perform these tasks – never mind an employee. 
Simple math showed it doesn’t take long for a machine to pay for itself. In our shop I am more than happy if it runs eight hours per week. Often it will run non-stop for a few days, then sit idle for a week or two. It’s there when I need it and happily sits idle in the corner when I don’t. Since it has long been paid for it’s all gravy these days.

I did a LOT of research before buying our MultiCam. It has proven to be one of the best decisions I could have made. It has ramped up the quality of work we do by far. It has enabled our shop to become much more productive and profitable.

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.

Why 30 lb Precision Board?

The most often question I get asked is why we exclusively use 30 lb (or higher) density Precision Board High Density Urethane in our shop. The answer is simple. It makes sense. Our decision was based on real world experience. It’s all we keep in stock.

30 lb Density HDU is not common. Many suppliers are reluctant to stock it for that reason. But I believe it well worth the effort to get it in. It is so much stronger than lighter weight HDU’s. It is much more resistant to dents, hail, birds pecking it, flying rocks or golf balls and just about anything else that might harm our signs and dimensional projects. There is nothing more frustrating than working on a project for hours and hours only to bump it accidentally, making a repair instantly necessary. Repairs take time and cost money. That’s profits! To much to take a chance in my view.

Heavier density HDU boards hold detail well – much better than lower density boards. And I LOVE detail in our work. Textures route beautifully in 30 lb Precision Board and I can run our router just as quickly as the lighter weight boards. Working it by hand does require a little more effort. I would argue that the extra investment of the heavier weight board more than offsets the cost of labor saved when it comes to priming and painting the signs.

Heavier density Precision Board actually saves us money. The lighter boards take time to apply multiple coats of primer. Many folks spend a lot of time sanding to get things smooth as well. We don’t.  Sanding takes time and we all know time equals money. With the higher density boards we need only one coat of primer at most to make things very smooth.

The heavier board is easy to sell too. REAL EASY. I keep samples of 15, 18 and 20 lb Precision Board handy in my sales area. When a customer is talking about a sign I’ll grab one of the lighter weight samples and run my finger nail into it leaving a nasty groove. Then I’ll hand my customer a sample of the 30 or 40 lb board which I also keep handy and ask them to do the same. They can’t make a mark. I explain that this premium material certainly costs more but is worth the investment for obvious reasons. It’s always an instant sale and in the process I actually make more profit.

The samples in the picture below say a lot. The 30 lb board sample is a very old one, yellowed with age. It has a few welding burns but is otherwise unmarked. because it is so tough. The 40 lb sample underneath is also pristine. The two lighter weight samples (15 and 20 lb) have plenty of grooves from my fingernail tests in front of customers.

Most of all I love the peace of mind 30 lb Precision Board offers.

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.