Outdoor sign material

They have special primer for HDU, but I didn’t use it. I just used a stone textured Rustoleum spray paint and some black exterior house paint to do the letters. Again, those signs have been out for two years, and I stopped by a few weeks ago, and they still looked great.

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Thanks everyone for the information. I haven’t found anyone in Cincinnati that actually has it. They all need to order it and ship it in, the search will continue in that respect. I did find it on Amazon. 1/2" thick 2’x’2’ is $25 plus $11 for shipping no Prime shipping available for it. Going to purchase a sheet or two to try out and see it goes.

Planecrazy what bit did you use>

Again thanks or the input. Steve

Think MDF when you’re cutting. So I just used a 1/4 endmill for a roughing pass and I think an 1/8" for the finishing pass. But really, anything will cut it: upcut, downcut, it doesn’t matter, it just disintegrates into dust.

I’ve had good experiences with a product from Lowes ( usually in stock ) called:

Royal Mouldings Limited (Actual: 0.375-in x 48-in x 8-ft) Common Board PVC Board
Item # 677203 Model # 0287808021

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Royal-Mouldings-Limited-Actual-0-375-in-x-48-in-x-8-ft-Common-Board-PVC-Board/50393486

Cutting it down has been the most difficult part of it. Use blades with fine teeth. Course toothed cutting tools will leave a rough cut and blow PVC pieces everywhere ( not that I would know ).

What have you made with`it. I will check it out. Thanks

I just made a simple 18 inch spinning wheel for winning-a-prize kind of thing. It was for a craft show. I would post a picture but honestly, I really want to do it over again. It looks nice enough but it was my first try and I haven’t had time to fix some of the issues I had in my Easel file.

The material seems to machine well with pretty much every bit I have and it’s relatively rigid. There’s also a good selection of paints, primers and glues available for PVC at your average hardware store too so you shouldn’t have a problem with that. I hope it works out.

Well our Lowes doesn’t carry but thankfully Home Depot does $60 a sheet ALOT cheaper than the HDU material , Did you glue any of it together if so what did you use? and assuming you painted it what paint did you use? This is listed as PVC board so curious if you did anything different than what Plane Crazy did with the HDU material he used Rustoleum which is my preferred rattle can paint, I don’t like the Krylon paint at all.

I’m glad to hear you found it. Even the workers at my store weren’t aware of it when I asked. They had to look up the part number to find it. LOL.

My project ended up not requiring glue but I had planned on using the normal pvc bonding products made for pvc pipes. My understanding is that it actually chemically “melts” an outer layer of pvc so that the partner piece’s melted layer intermix when fitted and they become one piece after it cures. That being my understanding, I felt like those products would create the strongest bond. I’m sorry I can’t offer more than my thoughts on that. I never actually did a glue test.

My wife ended up painting and I think she used acrylics but we were in a rush at the time and just used what we had. If I were to do it again I would find a primer suitable for pvc before any final coats but what we used worked.

Thanks!

really good info, I was not award they sold PVC sheets.

I used the Rustoleum 2x rattle cans, worked good.

For glue, I used the E6000.

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I recently saw this material used https://www.inventables.com/categories/materials/plastic/hdpe at a hotel on a sign that said “keep off the grass”

They used the green and white variety.

Thought that sign said Noctural Emission for a second when I first glanced.

Tripped and fell right in the gutter.

I’m curious how it will hold up to UV light outdoors. That has always been a problem for me on outdoor signs, especially black as it tends to chalk up.

I coated the whole thing with poly once it was done. I’s only been a few months, so not sure of the long term.

This sounds like my kind of fishing trip!

What material setting can be used for the high density foam? I’m using the free Easel version and it does not have a foam setting. MDF or ??

I’d imagine MDF is right. I always seem to manually override anyway.

Ok, thanks! I’ll try that.