Some Exterior Signs!

[asibley]

Here are some signs I've made using HDU!

Attachments:

[arsystems]

very cool. professional.

[buildswithbrian]

nice work!
looking forward to trying HDU someday
its expensive stuff though if you just want to play around

[redwood]

I would love to know the process of coloring those signs.

[mindstate]

Me too! Really nice work there on those signs.

[branson]

Awesome job!

[garylyb]

Beautiful work.

[dadealeus]

Great work on the signs!

To answer the question about how he did it, I think he mostly hand-painted these considering his use of several different colors.

You can do multiple colors with masking, but you need to re-mask for each color unless you're going to do some hand painting - which is why I think he did a lot of hand painting.

For more bulk sign making of these types of signs, I do this (assuming we're replicating the first sign in the post):

1) Cut out ONLY the border of the sign from the HDU so that you just have the raw shape of the sign (if you need filets on the edges, you can either CNC them in, or just hit them with the hand router at this stage).

2) Dust off the sign and then prime the entire thing; front, back, and sides.

3) Sketch out the rough design of your sign using a pencil. Go just hard enough to see the lines or you might damage the underlying foam.

3) Using your sketch as a reference, broadly paint white across the lettered area. Once dry, paint the rest of the sign pink (I'm assuming the back of that sign is also pink) so that all the primer is now covered in either pink or white paint. If using a paint sprayer, you'll want to mask off the white area with some masking tape and painter's plastic before you hit it with the pink.

4) Once the sign is dry, mask the entire front of the painted board with something like Oramask (https://tinyurl.com/y5ujqubc).

5) Mill out the black area using your CNC mill (which "unmasks" only the area you milled).

6) Prime and paint the unmasked area black (making sure to remove the dust before doing so). Again, if using a sprayer, make sure you cover the back and sides of the sign with masking tape and painter's plastic (or something similar).

7) Once dry, peel the vinyl away to reveal the white lettering and the pink borders. For the lettering that leaves little "islands" of vinyl mask (like the letter 'O' in 'Molly'), you can use the edge of an exacto-knife to gently remove that vinyl.

8) Then, finish it off by hand-painting the various shades on the pink flower. I like to do this step last because you'll generally want to see how the entire sign looks before/during adding finishing touches. If you leave the vinyl on at this stage, you might not be happy with the colors you chose once you reveal the entire sign to yourself.

[chipclark2000]

Nice work! Love the texturing in the pockets!