Electric Wall Sign

[mtylerfl]

What a great post - a step-by-step process and I love that! Almost everything you itemized, I don't have the slightest clue about, but you did a wonderful job showing us a professional electric sign creation and installation process! Thank you for including us on this journey.

[johnh]

Great post.. Thanks so much for sharing. I travel to SD occasionally and will someday soon get a close up view of your fantastic work. Very very nice!
We gave up channel letters years ago because of our local UL rep and me having difficulty in understanding what their requirements were. They had me so paranoid I got to where I would only build standard acrylic or poly faced internally illum channel letters mounted to a raceway. I admit it was mostly my fault for not understanding their requirements but our local inspector SUCKED and would never offer assistance, suggestions, etc.. he just stepped in and clocked himself in hoping for a nice fat invoice as a result.

We built ours this way because they could leave the shop fully assembled and labeled with a simple installation sheet, satisfying our inspector. I noticed your beautiful display obviously required some fairly substantial field assembly, multiple lighting sources (both exposed neon and LED halo). Did any of this pose any issues in dealing with UL?

I don't want it to get too far off the shopbot topic but I really would like your take on these matters.

[wcsg]

Thank you again everybody, these jobs are always fun to do and it is more hobby than work for me.

John,

UL has become a big pain lately over the years and UL is known for straying off the OSHA standards that they are required to abide by. You should try another laboratory called "MET Labs", they are the equivalent, but they stick closely to the standards and less regulatory. UL has become a profit farm with their multiple webinars and constant subscriber updates coupled with standards of their own that aren't apart of OSHA.

Everything you see is listed in the SAM and used in it's proper form. Not very many options for wet location Neon these days sadly, mainly just 200 housings and caps for the moisture and wet location masters technologies sleeving, boots & caps. LEDs, well their IP68 and all connections for wet as well.

There is a good book out there to help. Look up the Neon & LED Installation Manual http://neoninstallationguide.com/

It has some good examples and CAD drawings you can import to include with your shop drawings for permitting, and it's a wonderful reference that sites NEC codes. There are a few books out there but this is one of the good ones. If you have any questions regarding code always feel free to stop by http://www.thesignsyndicate.com/ and ask. We have plenty of knowledgeable individuals of the electric sign trade that can answer. UL reps should be pretty helpful to you, if not, you should pop a question to someone above their head like their supervisors. They have lost a lot subscribers to MET because of their cocky sometimes obnoxious attitudes, and their higher ups don't like that. So this is why UL lately has had a PR run to get back some of their lost subscribers. Their no longer the only option out their, they know that so their trying their best to be more "humble".