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It’s All Creek to Me

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In the fall of 2009, the new manager of the Creek Nation Casino in Checotah, OK, contacted Melissa Mirsaeidi, one of our account executives, to discuss creating a new pylon spectacular to celebrate and announce to their customers that the facility had been recently remodeled.
 

Claude Neon Federal Signs (CNF) has a long history with the Muscogee Creek Nation tribe. We’ve previously done work not only at this location, but at most of their facilities, including their tribal-government complex, the pylon ID for their Muscogee casino, and interior and exterior signage at their new River Spirit Casino in Tulsa (see ST, May 2010, page 67).

Requirements for the sign included a new, LED videoscreen; a height of 60 ft. for good visibility, and a fire and water theme. They asked for suggestions to change fonts and themes previously used in logos to further set this location apart from its predecessors, so we worked on a freshened look for their logo text as well.

 

Betting the house
Using Adobe Illustrator, we created a sign that’s half water and half fire. We wanted to give the customer the “wow factor” they wanted, and what better way to do that than 2,160 linear ft. of animated neon? We “doubled down” on the gas-filled tubes and created a display with the most neon we‘ve used on a single sign in the seven years I’ve been at CNF. We decided that flames of EGL 15mm Clear Gold II and clear red would rise above the 10 x 18-ft. Daktronics Galaxy Pro board. A waterfall of Neo, Horizon and E40 blue neon flow down the pylon cover to the sign’s base.

Our design team fleshed out the template with Illustrator and developed the dimension with the Hotdoor’s CADtools plug-in. The customer gave prompt approval to our plan. Larry Ritz, our vinyl/router department supervisor, also plotted a 6-ft.-tall poster of the neon layout we created with Aries’ Neon Wizard.

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Ritz, our tubebenders – Carl Gaebler and Tom Wolski – and I devised a plan to organize the nearly half-mile of neon, which presented one of our biggest challenges. We labeled nearly 500 individual neon units and kept track of them until installation. Using a color-coded scale of drawings, the benders marked off the units when finished and stored them by section on our racks after they’d completed the burn-in process.

We minimized the number of individual patterns needed by repeating units throughout the graphic flames. By doing so, one unit shape would actually work in any number of locations on both sides of the display. This cut our production time, because benders could get into the rhythm of producing multiple units at the same time.

Using Larry’s neon blueprint, Carl and Tom created a naming convention for the units that the installers could use later. We also used this to colorize the animation pattern as well, while I created an animated GIF file using Adobe Photoshop. We used the file for Creek officials to review and approve the design, as well as a guideline for our shop and the technicians at Rocox Inc., who created the sign’s two, large, custom animators.

 

Piece by piece
While we coordinated the electronics, fabricators cut the individual skin panels and channel-letter backs on our 6 x 10-ft. MultiCam MG router table. Metal-shop supervisor Tony Record and his crew began framing the structure in 2.5-in.-thick steel angle for six, separate sections that we later stacked in the field to create the final sign.

Working on such a large sign presents the logistical challenge of finding room to store the individual parts as they’re completed. During the Checotah production, we were simultaneously building two other gargantuan signs: an 80-ft.-tall sign for another Creek Nation location, as well as a 65-ft.-tall sign for the Lucky Star Casino.

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Mike Evans began laying out the individual cabinets with routed text and aluminum frames that read “Creek Nation” and “Checotah.” These panels are internally illuminated by 576 linear ft. of EGL 8300K that’s mounted on panels which can be slid up through service doors on the top of each cabinet. We did this to simplify any future service work that might be required in the field on a relatively thin, 6-in.-deep cabinet. We considered LEDs for this facet of the job, but we had abundant, surplus, neon tubing in the shop, so we decided to incorporate it.

For interior-service access, we used McNichols Corp. expanded-metal panels to produce catwalks and customer ladders. CNF assembled the Daktronics board sections in the shop, and fabricators built a framing system using steel angle to fit the video displays.

As the sheetmetal department finished the individual sign sections, they transferred them to Doug and Armando in our paint department for prep work and application of Akzo Nobel Grip-Gard BC single-stage, urethane topcoat, which they applied with their Sata HVLP paint guns. They estimate they used approximately 20 gallons of paint to cover the sign from top to bottom.

 

Light up my life
Once the paint began to dry, CNF applied the digitally printed, flame graphics that provide the background for the neon tubing. Premier Digital (Lubbock, TX) supplied the nearly 200 sq. ft. of vibrantly printed, contour-cut graphics. The challenge? Aligning large graphics that have absolutely no straight edges to measure from, which were also split over three different sections. They had to line up when stacked together in the field. Measure twice, cut once was the order of the day.

Rocox’s custom-built 320 Special and 420 Special animators arrived, and we moved them into the electrical and final assembly area with the sign sections. Our final-assembly gurus, David and Imer, first positioned the 78 France magnetic transformers, which ranged from 7,500 to 12,000V (all were 30mA), and ran the GTO wire through while Jeremy worked in the LEDs.

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We used AgiLight TuffRayz to illuminate the coves that span the sign from top to bottom. Red LEDs brighten the top, and blue modules illuminated the lower section. We wanted softer light within the coves, and for the light source to be largely unseen from the ground. Neon would’ve have required a cove, and it could possibly encounter damaging weather due to Oklahoma’s heavy spring rains and sometimes harsh winter snow and ice storms. We chose the TuffRayz for their built-in, weatherproof tolerances.

All departments worked together to pre-fit the sign sections two at a time. Our facility’s ceiling height limited us to this; shop forklifts served as interior cranes. This helped us to align bolt holes and weld plates, and to label wiring for easy hookup on site. We find this eases the field assembly and makes for less work to be done on site by our installers.

 

Harnessing the power
Utility easements and property lines forced the pylons to be located very near the casino building. This required careful planning to drill the 5 x 16-ft., direct-burial footings for the sign and concrete work. An outside contractor handled this project phase.

Next, a new electrical service had to be pulled to the site as the sign required more power than the casino had available. Approximately 600mA were required to power the new display. It’s not unusual for a 60-ft.-tall, pylon sign with an EMC to require a lot of power. The amount of neon and the animator multiplied the amount required. The animator needed four separate circuits and grounds, which prevented us from testing the animation in the shop. Had the animator failed during the site test, it would have required considerable rewiring. Fortunately, it worked as planned.

Four of our install technicians assembled the sign onsite using an 85-ft.-reach HD Skyhook, a 52-ft.-reach Wilkie bucket boom, a 15-ton spider crane and a 72-ton hydro crane. To complete the installation, we elevated a 2-ton, assembled top piece that required an industrial crane to clear the pylon tops.
 

The client decided to add a 200-lb., $7,000 spotlight to crown the sign a few weeks after completion. Our field team helped them with this install, and, other than being a little awkward to maneuver onto the top of the sign, we secured and wired it pretty quickly.

Casino signage always provides challenges. But, I prefer these types of jobs, because, from a design standpoint, they allow almost complete freedom and a budget that allows the exploration of possibilities that otherwise normally don’t progress past the idea stage.
 

 

Equipment and Materials
Cranes: Skyhook HD crane, from Attco Inc. (Letha, ID), (800) 475-9466 or www.skyhookmfr.com; bucket boom truck, from Wilkie Mfg. LLC (Oklahoma City), (405) 235-0920 or www.wilkiemfg.com; 15-ton crane, from Spider Mini Crane USA (Santa Clara, CA), (888) 779-6464 or www.spiderminicraneusa.com; hydro crane, from such companies as Hydro Hoist (Claremore, OK), (800) 825-3379 or www.boatlift.com

Lighting: Gold, red and blue, 15mm neon tubing, from EGL (Berkeley Heights, NJ), (908) 508-1111 or www.egl-neon.com; magnetic transformers, from France (Fairview, TN), (800) 753-2753 or www.franceformer.com; neon animator, from Rocox (Amarillo, TX), (806) 622-3800 or www.rocox.com; TuffRayz red and blue LEDs, from Agilight (San Antonio, TX), (866) 482-0203 or www.agilight.com
Messageboard: Galaxy Pro electronic message center, from Daktronics (Brookings, SD), (800) 325-8766 or www.daktronics.com

Paint: Grip-Gard BC single-stage, urethane coating, from Akzo Nobel (Norcross, GA), (770) 662-8464 or www.akzonobel.com; HVLP paint guns, from Sata (Kornwestheim, Germany), (49) 7154-8110 or www.sata.com

Router: MultiCam MG router table, from MultiCam (Dallas), (972) 929-4070 or www.multicam.com
Software: Illustrator® software, from Adobe® Corp. (San Jose, CA), (408) 536-6000 or www.adobe.com; CADtools software plug-in, from Hotdoor (Laguna Beach, CA), (888) 236-9540 or www.hotdoor.com; Neon Wizard, from Ares Graphics (San Marcos, CA), (800) 294-7273 or www.signwizard.com
Vinyl: Digital graphics provided by Premier Digital (Lubbock, TX), (800) 299-7446 or www.pmgdigital.com.

More About Joe and Claude Neon Federal (CNF) Signs
In 1996, Joe Kesterson went straight from graphic-design school to work in the sign industry after he noticed a shortage of trained designers in the field. He took a position with Claude Neon Federal seven years ago as a senior designer and project manager after a stint as an environmental graphic designer in Houston. In his spare time, Joe performs custom painting and airbrush work on motorcycles and hot rods, and designs logos and t-shirts for small companies.

Georges Claude, father of the neon tube, sold franchising rights to Federal Sign and Signal in the early 1900’s to produce his product in the United States. CNF’s Tulsa branch opened in 1926. Initially, Tulsa and Oklahoma City operated as sales offices for the company’s Wichita, KS-based manufacturing facility. CNF became privately owned in 1955, and it remains so today.

CNF’s team comprises approximately 50 people, many of whom own more than 20 years of experience. The company operates nine crane trucks with operational ranges of 60 to 120 ft. Last year, CNF moved to a new operations facility that provides 33,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing under one roof near downtown Tulsa.
 

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