Dimensional Sign Letters

Dimen­sion­al let­ters are made using two dif­fer­ent meth­ods of production.

1. Flat Cut­ting (CNC)

2. Chan­nel Let­ter Forming

1. Flat Cut Letters

Flat cut let­ters are CNC (Com­put­er Numer­i­cal Con­trol) cut using a com­put­er con­trolled machine with a laser, water jet or router bit attachment.

2. Fab­ri­cat­ed Chan­nel Letters

Chan­nel let­ters are met­al or plas­tic signs made of bent chan­nels that are glued or weld­ed into cus­tom shaped let­ters or symbols.

How do 3D let­ters work? What type of mate­r­i­al do you use, what col­or should the let­ters be, what are my options? 

There are 3 Main options when mak­ing dimen­sion­al signs:

1. Depth

2. Mate­r­i­al

3. Fin­ish

We will go into these in fur­ther detail below.

Flat cut mate­ri­als nor­mal­ly range in depth between ¹⁄₈″ to 1″. It’s best to choose your let­ter­ing depth based on the size of the let­ter­ing and how they’re going to be used.

For exam­ple, thin­ner let­ters mount­ed flush with the wall work bet­ter for high traf­fic areas like desks and hall­ways. Thin­ner let­ters have a low­er pro­file and don’t get in the way.

On the oth­er hand, less fre­quent­ed areas like walls behind recep­tion desks are more pro­tect­ed and can allow for indi­vid­u­al­ly cut let­ter­ing raised off the wall on pegs for an addi­tion­al float­ing effect.

Most com­mon flat cut mate­r­i­al depths along with their best use cases:

Ide­al if you are on a bud­get or for sub­head­ings and sec­ondary infor­ma­tion. We usu­al­ly cut this depth with an adhe­sive sticky back to allow the sign to be eas­i­ly adhered to the wall.

Our most pop­u­lar depth for 3D raised let­ters. This Depth can be raised on spac­ers (small peg mounts) for an addi­tion­al float­ing effect or direct­ly to the wall on dou­ble sided tape. Pro­vides a sub­stan­tial look and feel.

Excel­lent for when you need a beefi­er, bold­er look.

Per­fect for a very bold look. Usu­al­ly the max depth for flat cut materials.

Anoth­er ques­tion relat­ed to mate­r­i­al depth is how far the let­ters stick off the wall. Mean­ing how far are the dimen­sion­al let­ters spaced off the wall on mounts, pegs, rods, or spacers.

In most cas­es, we raise our signs off the wall on ¹⁄₂″ spac­ers. Rais­ing the indi­vid­u­al­ly cut let­ters gives them an added float­ing or hov­er­ing effect that makes them appear more 3 dimensional.

Depend­ing on your light­ing, rais­ing your sign on ¹⁄₂″ mounts will also cast a shad­ow. The shad­ow effect can be increased or decreased by adjust­ing your lighting.

Although the aver­age spac­er depth is ¹⁄₂″, we can also accom­mo­date requests for cus­tom spac­er depths such as ¹⁄₄″, ³⁄₄″, 2″, 5″ or any oth­er depth.

Cer­tain wall types, such as ledge stone or irreg­u­lar pat­terned walls may require the dimen­sion­al let­ters to be raised at var­i­ous depths. In this case we usu­al­ly include thread­ed rods with no set spac­er depth and the height of the let­ters off the wall can be adjust­ed man­u­al­ly, ensur­ing the let­ters are level.

When dimen­sion­al let­ters are flush mount­ed with sticky back or dou­ble sided tape, then they will only raise off the wall by the depth of the let­ters them­selves because the tape itself does not have much thick­ness to it.

Acrylic

Our most com­mon­ly used mate­r­i­al for mak­ing indi­vid­u­al­ly cut 3D let­ters and sym­bols is acrylic which we cut using an indus­tri­al CNC laser cutter.

Acrylic is a type of high grade plas­tic. It’s a mate­r­i­al that can be clear, frost­ed, pig­ment­ed, or used with films and lam­i­nates to pro­duce end­less fin­ish options.

We use acrylic because it is ver­sa­tile, high qual­i­ty, and very durable. Most impor­tant­ly, acrylic can be laser cut. 

Because acrylic can be laser cut, it allows us to get very cre­ative when mak­ing 3D let­ters and logos. Laser cut­ting allows us to make very com­pli­cat­ed logos in a num­ber of impres­sive look­ing col­ors and finishes.

Acrylic can be lam­i­nat­ed with com­plex prints, cus­tom films, brushed met­al and mir­rored or chrome fin­ish­es to make very high end and high­ly cus­tomiz­able 3D logos.

We often com­bine acrylic with brushed sil­ver or chrome mir­ror fin­ish­es and paint the pre­cise, laser cut edges to match the sur­face of the mate­r­i­al. This allows us to achieve the look of high end met­al fin­ish­es with­out using heavy and expen­sive real met­al fin­ish­es. The major­i­ty of the met­al look­ing signs in our exam­ple gallery are made using this finish. 

We call brushed sil­ver lam­i­nat­ed acrylic fin­ish­es: brushed met­al substitute.

Met­al

We can use the fol­low­ing types of met­al for dimen­sion­al signs:

• Alu­minum
• Stain­less Steel
• Brass
• Bronze
• Cop­per

We have acrylic based, ​“brushed met­al sub­sti­tutes” for all met­al options. These acrylic based metal­lic fin­ish­es are com­mon­ly pre­ferred because they are more cost effec­tive, involve more pre­cise laser cut man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­niques and often pro­duce a clean­er, sharp­er logo.

Tra­di­tion­al flat cut met­al is often used for dimen­sion­al let­ters and signs in cas­es where more cost effect acrylic based, brushed met­al sub­sti­tutes can­not be used such as out­doors or in spe­cif­ic envi­ron­ments requir­ing a cer­tain met­al finish.

Wood

We can use a num­ber of wood fin­ish­es for dimen­sion­al let­ters and signs:

• Raw wood
• Stained wood
• Raw MDF
• Paint­ed MDF

Wood is laser cut to make wood­en dimen­sion­al let­ters and logos. Any part of the wood that is cut will have a dark burnt edge. This edge can either be left nat­u­ral­ly dark or addi­tion­al­ly it can be stained or paint­ed a cus­tom color.

Wood can also be laser engraved or etched. Details that are laser etched will nat­u­ral­ly come out dark and burnt. We con­trol the lev­el of dark­ness based on how much pow­er we use to laser etch the design. The etched design can either be light or very dark depend­ing on the look you pre­fer. The dark­er the image, the deep­er the engrav­ing will be.

We also use laser cut wood for dimen­sion­al let­ters requir­ing cus­tom cer­tain fin­ish­es such as faux rust.

Wood is a very cost effec­tive option for large orders of dimen­sion­al letters.

Com­mon­ly used dimen­sion­al sign let­ter finishes:

• Paint­ed to match cor­po­rate col­ors (Cus­tom pan­tone, PMS #‘s)
• Brushed nick­el
• Brushed gold
• Mir­rored (Chrome)
• Frost­ed Acrylic (Pas­tel Ice Frost®)
• Glossy black (Pig­ment­ed acrylic)

We con­tin­ue to inno­vate with a wide array of cus­tom finishes. 

We have the widest selec­tion of acrylic based brushed met­al sub­sti­tute fin­ish­es that pro­vide the look and feel of sol­id met­al, with a crisper and more refined appear­ance at a frac­tion of the cost.

Com­plex gra­di­ents and graph­ics can be dig­i­tal­ly print­ed onto the mate­r­i­al and cut to shape. The edges of the mate­r­i­al can then be paint­ed to match the gra­di­ents on the faces of the letters.

4 Few easy steps for mak­ing 3D sign letters:

• Art­work Preparation
• Laser Cut­ting
• Paint­ing
• Instal­la­tion

Art­work Preparation

In order to ensure the high­est qual­i­ty final prod­uct for your sign, we require the orig­i­nal art­work files for your logo. This could be a file in either .EPS, .PDF or .AI for­mat with vec­tors. You should be able to get this from the per­son who designed your logo. Although we can­not pro­ceed with­out this file, if you do not have it, we will help you recre­ate it.

If you have spe­cif­ic col­ors to match such as Pan­tone col­ors or paint swatch­es, we need them at this point so that our team can mix our paints accordingly.

Laser Cut­ting

We use a high grade indus­tri­al CNC laser cut­ting machine that fol­lows every point and curve of your logo to ensure your dimen­sion­al sign is cut pre­cise­ly to specifications.

Paint­ing

Once your dimen­sion­al let­ters have been cut, we paint them to match. Brushed fin­ish­es also have edges paint­ed sil­ver to match for a sol­id, seam­less look.

Instal­la­tion

We pro­vide every­thing required to mount your sign in the box, includ­ing easy to use mount­ing pat­tern, instal­la­tion instruc­tions, hard­ware and adhe­sives. We also pro­vide local instal­la­tion pro­fes­sion­als to help with dimen­sion­al sign let­ter installation.

We make cus­tom dimen­sion­al signs quick and easy— from design­ing, and sug­gest­ing mate­r­i­al options to deter­min­ing wall mount­ing details for instal­la­tion— We have you cov­ered! Get in touch to quote and order your own dimen­sion­al sign.