Sign for the snow birds

Darren Wright

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Springfield, Missouri
Mom mentioned that UPS was having a hard time finding their place when they had packages coming, so decided to make them a sign for their place in AZ. I did a quick design in vCarve and off to the shop
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I glued up 3 pieces of PVC trim board and painted blue, since that is what I had on hand. Then off to the CNC it went. I used a 60* vbit spiral cutter for the vcarving, 1/4" end mill for the cut-out. The edge got a chamfer from the 60* vbit as well.
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I think they will be happy with it, I placed it face down and painted the back and edges blue as well after cutting it out of the tabs and sanding them down.
 
That looks fantastic and should be a great way to get delivery people where they need to be. Signage is often misunderstood and under used for personal homes. People don't find out how hard it is to find their home until an emergency. This will help with that if the need arises. Great job!
 
I just read something recently about painting dark colors may be problematic. I don't know much about it. The issue is with dark colors causing a higher heat index and doing something to the paint. Not sure with the effect is. If I can remember where I saw that I will present it. I am working on a sign with PVC now, but I am painting white.

The sign looks GREAT. Did you used the new CNC machine for this?
 
I just read something recently about painting dark colors may be problematic. I don't know much about it. The issue is with dark colors causing a higher heat index and doing something to the paint. Not sure with the effect is. If I can remember where I saw that I will present it. I am working on a sign with PVC now, but I am painting white.

The sign looks GREAT. Did you used the new CNC machine for this?
Being dark, I could see it being an issue to see or read at night. I'm sure the Phoenix heat/sun will be a good test for it. ;)

I did use the new machine. I ran all operations at 100 ipm, but think I could have gone a lot faster. The whole job took about 30 minutes.
 
PVC is really easy to cut. Only thing that happend to me if I run too fast is the "defination" of the text. I start rounding corners on the sharp corners. I know it's all about settings in Mach3, but I am still learning about that stuff. Normally, I run text at about 150 IPM. Often I will run a dead pass.
 
That's a very nice sign. It should help to make the delivery drivers and emergency responders take notice, but sometimes it takes more than nice signs to get deliveries and emergency personnel to the correct place.

Some years back when I was an EMT on a rescue squad, the dispatchers would tell the people to "leave the porch lights on", but there was one long zig-zag road in town where this didn't help much. Most of the people living there worked 2nd and 3rd shift, so many of their families were awake while the husbands were at work, so they were outside with the lights on playing basketball, gardening, etc. at 2 and 3 AM. There were also several families with the same last name on that street, so even the correct mailbox was hard to find. Sometimes it made for some difficult times finding the location of the actual emergency.

I now live at the very end of a dead end street. My driveway is 1,600 ' long and is shaped much like a backwards ? mark. My home is in the loop and actually faces a lake and not the street. Getting guests and delivery people to go to the far end of the driveway and to the porch at the far end of the house frequently is impossible. I have made signs with arrows, etc. but it seems that some delivery people either just don't read signs or just want to get the package off the street and to the nearest corner of the house. When Amazon sends me an email saying "delivered" it usually signals the beginning of the hunt for the package. USPS has put my delivery on top of my garbage cans a few times.

Charley
 
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