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Adhesive materials help commercial signage
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3M Europe
: 13 July, 2004 (New Product) |
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Both VHB tape and Scotch-Weld EPX adhesive from 3M offer designers cost-effective and resilient alternatives for multiple sign formats. |
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Poor commercial signage is arguably worse than no signage at all. Signs speak to a business’s credibility, stature and prestige, making durable, attractive materials as essential to a sign’s utility as its cost-effective production. 3M offers a comprehensive range of effective bonding solutions that provide aesthetic and durable performance tailored to material choice and sign design.
The rivets, screws and spot-welding typical to conventional sign fabrication often necessitate compromises to design, durability and cost. Both VHB tape and Scotch-Weld EPX adhesive from 3M offer designers cost-effective and resilient alternatives for multiple sign formats.
Post and panel signs, for example, have relied on mechanical fastening methods to withstand extremes of both weather and temperature. Both rivets and spot-welding, however, can cause isolated stress points that over time can cause marks on the sign face. 3M’s VHB tape and Scotch-Weld EPX adhesive not only deliver comparable bonding performance to mechanical methods, they also enable designers to create a smooth sign face, free from distortion and spot-weld marks. Designed to join different substrates, these materials form flexible bonds that reduce joint stresses caused by rivets and other mechanical means. Use of adhesives can also the simplify assembly of large signs.
The same simplicity of application applies to fascias and signage comprising raised lettering. Here, 3M’s tape and adhesive materials provide an invisible, vandal-resistant bond between plastic and metal parts, as well as other disparate materials. The result is raised panels or lettering with a smooth, permanent finish.
For illuminated light boxes and box signs, 3M adhesive materials form transparent, water-tight bonds in a single simple operation, which is important for modular sign construction. These materials handle different rates of thermal expansions across a sign face, enabling them to maintain a water-tight seal despite interior illumination sources and harsh exterior environmental conditions. Sealing against water infiltration is also essential to shop signs, which are typically installed outside.
The variety of materials and designs constituting tall thin signs called totems requires a choice of bonding options, depending on the differential expansion of the substrates used and on environmental conditions. Whether assembly occurs before or after powder coating, 3M materials enable faster, quieter bonding and sealing operations in a single step. Further, they improve the sign’s initial appearance and eliminate adverse effects from mechanical stress points or varying thermal expansion across the totem’s surface. These considerations also apply to forecourt signage.
Design alternatives are also available for temporary and removable signage. The proprietary Dual Lock™ system from 3M comprises hundreds of mushroom-shaped stems that interlock and secure opposing parts when pressed together. The result is a very strong and yet reclosable assembly that can be opened and closed up to 1,000 times and is 12 times stronger than alternative hook and loop systems. 3M also offers a selection of removable foam tapes for temporary signs that deliver strong adhesion and allow clean and easy removability from most surfaces.
Whether signage attaches disparate materials, requires a water-tight seal or thermal performance, 3M adhesive tapes and materials provide the solution: clear, attractive, permanent bonding that is simple and cost-effective to implement in assembly. |
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