The acrylic letters are three dimensional in all the three types of LED acrylic sign board options mentioned above. They jut out a few inches from the base on which they are installed.
But we can also fabricate boards where these glowing acrylic letters are in the same plain as the surface they are mounted on. These backlit letters do not protrude and are in line with the base ACP frame. Our letters now have a two-dimensional effect.
How Are Stencil Letters Cut Into an ACP Panel? How Is the Board Lit Up?
Stencil cut letters, as the name suggests, are cut into the base ACP sheet. This is done using a CNC router. Let’s say that you need to cut a sign in the shape of the letter “A”. Signmakers make an “A” shaped hole in the metal sheet which goes into the making the base frame of the board. This hole is cut out using the drilling tool of a CNC router.
Remember the arts and craft class back in school when we used to cut stencil designs from paper using a blade? This process is pretty similar.
We then cut another letter “A” in the same shape and dimension of our ACP sheet’s ‘A’ shaped hole. This time the letter is made of a 3 mm thick acrylic sheet. Please also remember that acrylic is translucent and allows light to pass through.
Our laser cut acrylic letter is then precisely slotted into our “A” shaped hole on the metal sheet. LED modules are fitted in the hollow space of the ACP frame, beneath the acrylic letter. These modules make our 2D stencil cut acrylic sign glow and light up.
Why Would I Choose a 2D Stencil Letter Board in Place of a 3D Acrylic Letter Board?
You are probably wondering why people would opt to make signages in 2D as against the 3D options listed above? Here are several reasons why…
- Acrylic glow signboards with two-dimensional letters are cheaper to fabricate than 3D acrylic signs. The end cost that a customer has to pay for this option does come down.
- Architects and designers like to play with the heights of different elements on a sign. So they might choose to keep some of the elements on the signboard in 3D and others in two dimensions. Let me illustrate this by giving you an example.
Let us say your sign is made up of three elements. Your logo, the name of your firm and the tagline of your company. Obviously, all three of these elements are important since they are being put on the main shop board right outside your store.
But perhaps the name and logo need to be highlighted a bit more than the accompanying tagline. In this case, a designer would go for a larger font size and higher placement for these two elements vis-a-vis the tagline.
Moreover, the letters making up the name and logo would be fabricated in the more prominent 3D acrylic name board option. In contrast, the tagline would be restricted to a flat two dimension.
Our sign is composed entirely of lit up, glowing letters. But some letters (the name and logo) are highlighted more strongly by virtue of giving them more depth and making them jut out from the base surface. The tagline also looks pretty bright. But it is kept relatively subdued because it is stencil cut in just two dimensions.
Apart from pushing the more important elements forward, this play of differing heights on a signboard also looks more aesthetically pleasing. - Sometimes signboards are installed indoors. For example, the signs that you see in a bar or on the wall behind a hotel’s reception area. These signs are installed at eye level, and if the letters jut out significantly, they might brush or hit against people walking past them.
The less accident-prone, flat 2D glow signs then become the preferred option in this use case.
- 3D acrylic letters have LED modules embedded in the hollow space beneath them to impart a backlit glow. These modules are generally 35 mm in width. This means that signmakers need at least 2 inches of free space (width), beneath the letters, to install the same.
Most fonts on large boards have a width larger than the requisite 2 inches. And our LED modules can easily be installed in this gap. But there are cases where the board design is pretty intricate.
A particular font may be pretty thin and not wide enough to accommodate our LED modules. In this case, we need to opt for 2D stencil cut acrylic letters for our sign.