Is Azek a good sign blank material?

[bcondon]

Building a fairly simple sign with VCarve - Customer would like Azek or decking composite material. I know that Decking is recycled and may have metal in it.

Pricing on Azek locally is 4x8 x 3/4" is 185.
The sign will be 2x3 oval

Any negatives with machining it... I usually
use hardwood so plastic is quite new for me.

Thanks in advance..

[bcondon]

Search the past discussions and it appears to be a workable product.

(I should have searched BEFORE asking!)

[blackhawk]

Let us know how it turns out, and settings and bit that you used. I almost had a job to use the same material for a sign. I am interested to see how it works out for you.

[bcondon]

Bid it to the customer so we will see. I am tempted to buy a small board and play

[eaglesplsh]

I'm not familiar with Azek brand, but I have cut a whole lot of composite decking / "lumber" made from recycled plastic (polyethelene.)

First the good news...

This stuff cuts like butter. Wear and tear on your bits is less than what you would expect from cutting plywood/mdf.

The recycled products cost about 40% less than virgin polyethylene plastic stock and come in a number of different color.

There's no checks, warps, grain splintering, etc. to worry about. Also, there's no finishing time/expense involved in the job.


But, there are a couple of things to watch out for as well...

Many companies add sawdust filler to their mix - these brands can crumble/come apart.

The density of these composites varies greatly from batch to batch and mill to mill. That can have a big effect on cut quality and may require you to change your feeds/speeds if your running the same job multiple times over several months/material purchases.

Polyethylene melts at a low temp. It's easy for chips to weld themselves back to your part. Surface finish on the bottoms of pockets can be hard to clean up. If you're doing a roughing pass leave 0.030+ for your clean up pass - the heavier chip will be less likely to weld on. Onsrud makes an o-flute bit series for soft plastic that's GREAT, but that' may not help with your V-carve letters.

Lots of the mills will inject air bubbles into the core of the boards. It saves them money on material + freight. These marble sized bubbles don't make too much difference when you're building a deck, but if you're making signs/parts and you hit a void every 12 inches you're out of luck! With some batches/brands I used to loose 20% of my parts.

This material is slippery and can be hard to clamp - brads/air nailer works great as long as you don't cut through a brad.

The extrusion/cooling process used at many of the mills isn't well controlled. Board thickness will change by 0.100" from batch to batch. Also, the extruded shape will change - sometimes you get a football shape, sometimes you get an hourglass shape. Rarely do you see an actual rectangle with flat sides. That may effect your V-carved signs and also your clamping strategy. You can put this material through a thickness plainer without hurting the knives, but that adds to labor costs/material costs.

Overall, I think you're going to like working with this material. Hope this info was helpful in getting you off and running.

[navigator7]

Russ...are you talking about Trex Decking?

[zeykr]

I've made a few signs using Kleer. It's PVC similar to Azek but a little more dense. Kleer 3d carves well and is tough, but cuts easily. If sign is very big, you need to allow for expansion. Bond and Fill makes glue and plastic biscuits to join pieces if needed to make larger signs. Masking the woodgrain version can be troublesome if needed so avoid if possible. If you have to mask, anchorseal works for smaller signs but you have to prepaint areas to be masked - you shouldn't paint over areas that have had the wax masking.


Kleer:


6688
6689

6690 (7'x11')

Have also worked with moistureshield and choicedek. They cut well and have done vcarved, 2.5d, and inlay signs with it. Very rough on planer blades though. Variation in product thickness can be a problem.

ChoiceDek:


Vcarve:
6691 2.5d:
6692

[eaglesplsh]

@ Chuck - I haven't used Trex brand, but yes I was talking about similar products.

There are only 3-4 mills in the United States that produce this type of recycled plastic product. They make it confusing to purchase - most don't sell direct in less than pallet quantities and each wholesale distributor brands it under different names to hide the manufacturer.

Because the material has become popular, there are also several imported brands on the scene. These are by far the worst quality and not worth any savings you might see.

[eaglesplsh]

@ Chuck - I haven't used Trex brand, but yes I was talking about similar products.

There are only 3-4 mills in the United States that produce this type of recycled plastic product. They make it confusing to purchase - most don't sell direct in less than pallet quantities and each wholesale distributor brands it under different names to hide the manufacturer.

Because the material has become popular, there are also several imported brands on the scene. These are by far the worst quality and not worth any savings you might see.

[bcondon]

I was told to stay away from Treks or recycled products because they are RECYCLED and some may have bits of metal in them.

The concern is fire into your vacuum system which is full of saw dust