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Advance Sign Group Gives Columbus Hospital The Butterfly Effect

Ohio’s capital city a-flutter over Nationwide Childrens’ new sign program

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Jim Wasserstrom is president of Advance Sign Group (Columbus, OH).

Editor’s Note: According to chaos theory, a mathematical field of study developed by Edward Lorenz, a meteorology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, small differences in dynamically changing environments (such as weather systems) could yield wildly divergent outcomes. The title of his academic paper on the subject was titled, “Predictability: Does a Butterfly’s Wings’ Fluttering in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” Thus, the theory became known as “the butterfly effect.”

The analogy may seem a bit melodramatic in comparison to the project Wasserstrom recounts in this column, but, given the positive image that quality signage can incubate for an end user, installation of attractive signage, with decorative butterflies, reasonably will only build a positive image of a place where physicians wish to build their medical practices, and patients remember as an ideal place for sick or injured children to receive competent, compassionate medical care.

In March 2012, Turner Construction, the general contractor managing an expansion of Columbus’ Nationwide Children’s Hospital, awarded us the contract to fabricate and install the project’s exterior-wall-sign package. The job comprised four sets of halo-illuminated letters, which read “Nationwide Children’s”, and incorporated a logo that features various species of butterflies indigenous to Ohio. We also mounted a large set of butterflies to an exterior side wall of the new expansion hospital.

“Team ASG” immediately assumed full production mode to meet the ironclad June 8 completion deadline – the opening date for the hospital’s new section (with an accompanying fundraising gala planned by the hospital). The City of Columbus granted us a variance that greenlighted all sign sizes and locations.
 

To the Letter

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The four sets of individually mounted, halo-lit channel letters range in height from 3 ft. 8 in. to 7 ft. We used CorelDraw 6 to create all renderings, which included those developed for our shop, the contractors and project stakeholders. CorelDraw offers dimensioning features that Adobe doesn’t, which allowed a seamless transition from customer renderings to product drawings.

The hospital’s marketing team and a group of design firms collaboratively developed the logo. Executing the sign program required balancing the design and its colors, shapes and lighting without compromising the pattern details in each butterfly’s wings. This phase’s biggest challenge was devising the butterflies’ antennae, which appeared to be thin lines in the design phase. To produce them, we changed the sign cabinets’ contours to encompass the antennae, and allow printed graphics to produce the appearance of thin lines.

The end user wanted to see a full-size mock-up of the butterfly to review prior to releasing the entire project for fabrication. Team ASG’s production department worked overtime to create the original prototype – a 12-ft.-tall, blue butterfly that came to life in our shop. We hung it from one of our overhead cranes in the shop approximately 15 ft. in the air. We marked off distances of 50, 100 and 150 ft. on the shop floor so the client could observe different colors and wing details. This review process provided a valuable tool; the client approved the prototype on the spot.

We created the signs’ large bends using press brakes; however, we fabricated most shapes by hand. A project with such complex contours requires an artisan’s touch. Cutting, slotting and welding aluminum extrusions into winged shapes was very time-consuming. We fabricated the letters using 0.090-in.-thick aluminum backs, and 0.125-in.-thick aluminum faces with 4-in. returns. We cut all of the letter faces and returns on our MultiCam 3000 router. We painted the letter exteriors black with Akzo Nobel acrylic-polyurethane paint; we coated the interiors with white.

We routed the letter backs from 3/16-in.-thick Spartech polycarbonate, and illuminated the letters with
US LED’s Point2 LED illumination. Following an engineered module layout that US LED provided, we installed the white LEDs on 4-in.-long centers. The largest set of butterflies consumes more than 900 modules.

Building Butterfly Wings
Our most challenging project facet entailed the custom fabrication of the various sizes (ranging from 2 to 19 ft. tall) and species of butterflies. We built four different butterfly shapes for each set of letters, and also incorporated Nationwide’s logo shield. The client wanted to verify the contoured shape of each butterfly matched each set.

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To guarantee consistency, we fabricated each butterfly’s custom contours with 4-in.-deep, 0.090-in.-
thick, aluminum backs, which we cut on our MultiCam 3000. We painted the cabinets with the same Akzo Nobel paint scheme as the letters.

Because of the butterflies’ sizes, we needed to convert the customer’s artwork from CorelDraw into line art for fabrication and printing purposes. The original .jpg files were very pixelated when enlarged to actual size; transforming the graphics into line art allowed our tooling specialist to prep the file for EnRoute 4 software with the clean lines needed for successful routing, cutting and printing.

Miratec Systems (St. Paul, MN) printed the full-color, digital images. The signs were illuminated utilizing US LED Point2 modules. The faces comprise white 3M™ Panaflex™ flexible-face material with a full-color, mirror-printed digital image of each butterfly species. Creating identical prints on both sides enlivened the signs’ color palette while also diminishing the washout from LED lighting.
 

Climbing the Walls
Our installation team pin-mounted the letters and logos to the surfaces of four different buildings on the hospital campus. We had approximately 10 installers onsite at any given time, as well as three or four employees from the crane company. Each building’s wall texture was unique – surfaces included corrugated-metal walls, mesh screens and pre-cast concrete. We flush-mounted the butterflies to each surface.

We installed the butterflies on corrugated walls, which required through-bolts, and the signs on pre-cast concrete, which dictated tap-con connectors. Drilling through the corrugated walls presented the challenges of hitting steel beams and cross members, and drilling through 18 in. of aluminum, steel and insulation, and installing bolts to match sign cabinets’ mounting brackets as they were lifted into place.

The concrete walls were easier to work with, but most of these installations were done on swing stages (which were provided by Cincinnati-based Hi-Lo Climbers) set 150 ft. in the air. Eastland Crane and American Crane, both from Columbus, provided cranes with capacities from 32 to 120 tons, to lift swing stages, scaffolding and signage onto the building.

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The installation was a great challenge due to being onsite at a working hospital. We couldn’t block pedestrian walkways and parking areas. We were also challenged with making sure ambulance-unloading and helipad areas were clear while our crew lifted signs into place.

The Nationwide Children’s Hospital project presented many challenges; some were anticipated, some weren’t. High winds are a common hurdle for lofty installations, and we had to direct traffic around the jobsite and keep hospital workers clear from areas where cranes would be lifting. While being pulled to the jobsite, one of the crane trucks broke an axle, which completely obstructed the construction entrance. After having taken an hour to move the crane, seven men from our crew carried the letters onto elevators, maneuvered through various HVAC components, and lifted them into place with an electric hoist mounted to scaffolding atop the building. All in a day’s work.

Our talented installation team worked through each challenge and successfully completed the signage installation required for the grand opening of the new hospital. We’re proud of our shop’s skilled artisans, which brought the butterflies to vibrant life on the side of the building. The new signage has been widely discussed throughout Ohio’s capital city, and has been featured in many articles and local-news segments.
 

Equipment and Materials
Installation:
Swing stages, from Hi-Lo Climbers LLC (Cincinnati), (513) 574-9000 or www.hiloclimbers.com; heavy-duty cranes, from Eastland Crane (Columbus, OH), (614) 868-9750 or www.eastlandcrane.com, and American Crane, also of Columbus, (614) 863-3198 or www.americancraneinc.com  
Lighting: White Point2 LED modules, from US LED (Houston), (866) 972-9191 or www.usled.com
Plastic: Clear, 3/16-in.-thick polycarbonate, from Spartech (Clayton, MO), (888) 721-4242 or www.spartech.com
Printing: Panaflex™ flexible-face material, from 3M™ Corp. (St. Paul, MN), (888) 364-2577 or www.3mgraphics.com; digital printing, by Miratec Systems (St. Paul), (800) 336-1224 or www.miratecsystems.com
Router: MultiCam 3000 CNC router, from MultiCam LLC (Dallas), (972) 929-4070 or www.multicam.com
Software: EnRoute® 4 3-D software, from SA Intl. (Salt Lake City), (801) 478-1900 or www.saintl.biz; CorelDRAW® 6 software, from Corel Corp. (Ottawa, ON, Canada), www.corel.com
Miscellaneous: Tap-con connectors and through-bolts; 0.090- and 0.125-in.-thick aluminum; and press-brake and manual, metal-forming equipment
 

 

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