Friday Night Lights

Jamie Nelligan is co-founder of Identity Sign Group (Pottstown, PA). He and his partner, John Scott, have more than 30 combined years of sign-industry experience.

Sports-themed bars and restaurants generate an interesting dynamic. In few others places will investment bankers and plumbers sit comfortably side by side and cheer on their team. Also, in few other places would nachos, chicken wings and mozzarella sticks qualify as a good restaurant meal. Maybe those reasons explain why they’re so popular.

Repeat customers Kurt Buchler and Steve Haschak, who own several restaurants in the greater Philadelphia area, hired us to create illuminated building signage for Phoenixville’s (PA) Gridiron Sports Bar & Pizzeria, which opened July 29.

Identity Sign Group handled the sign project as a full design/build. Located just outside Philadelphia, we handle routine sign projects within a 30-mile radius, as well as various regional and national accounts.

The owners presented a few ideas about what they envisioned. Using CorelDraw Suite X3, I developed three different designs, and they selected my flames-and-football theme. The project required six weeks from conception to completion.

We always knew we would light this sign with LEDs. The layers of illumination this job required would’ve made fluorescents or neon tubing impractical. LEDs’ warranties and low voltage will also provide lower energy consumption and easier service.

We lit the sign with Lumificient Technologies’ Hyperion R-Lite LED modules. Lumificent assisted with a module layout to optimize illumination and recommended power supplies, Lumificient’s R-Lite HRL-06-PFC-24 power source.

Our facility sits adjacent to J&F Commercial Products, which helps us periodically with material orders. For this project, J&F routed ¼-in.-thick diamond-plate and clear Evonik Industries’ Acrylite® acrylic on its Gerber Sabre flatbed, CNC router.

We fabricated the 1-in.-deep, aluminum, pan-faced sign as the background, and painted it with a semi-gloss, latex paint to match the building. We also painted the routed, aluminum diamond-plate black and backed it with clear Acrylite acrylic. To light up its text, “Sports Bar and Pizzeria,” we used red Hyperion LEDs. We hand-rolled the flames with 0.063-in.-thick aluminum, which we brightened with yellow LEDs.

US Signs (Trumbull, CT) fabricated the sign’s polished, stainless-steel letters, which it backed with Sabic Lexan® polycarbonate. I’ve worked with US Signs for years and have always been satisfied with its products. In our shop, we installed LED inside the letters.

To create an appearance of floating, we mounted the orange LEDs to a ¼-in.-thick piece of acrylic and separated the acrylic from other layers with custom standoffs. To create the halo-lit reflection, we covered the acrylic with white, matte-finish FDC high-performance vinyl.

We used a Millermatic® MIG welder to weld aluminum studs onto the components and join them. For chemical bonding, we used IPS Corp.’s Weld-On 45 two-part, structural adhesive. We completed installation onsite with our Chevy 3500 truck with a Telsta 35-ft. bucket and 20-ft. scissor lift.

Signs play a vital role in developing a cost-effective branding and advertising plan that businesses of virtually any size can afford. We’re proud of our role to help create a theme for a place that brings fans of the Eagles, Flyers, Phillies and other area teams together to chow down, have some fun and cheer the home squads to victory.
 

Equipment and Materials

Adhesive: Weld-On 45 two-part, structural adhesive, from IPS Corp. (Compton, CA), (310) 898-3300 or www.ipscorp.com

Letters: Polished, stainless-steel channel letters, from US Sign (Trumbull, CT), (203) 601-1000 or www.ussign.com

Lighting: Hyperion red, orange and yellow LEDs and R-Lite HRL-06-PFC-24 power supplies, from Lumificient Technologies (Maple Grove, MN), (763) 424-3702 or www.lumificient.com

Plastics: Acrylite® acrylic, from Evonik Industries (Parsippany, NJ), (800) 631-5384 or www.acrylite.net; Lexan® polycarbonate, from Sabic Innovative Plastics (Pittsfield, MA), (413) 448-7110 or www.sabic-ip.com

Router: Sabre 404 CNC router, from Gerber Scientific Products (South Windsor, CT), (800) 222-7446 or www.gspinc.com, used by J & F Commercial Products (Pottsown, PA).

Software: CorelDraw Suite X3, from Corel Corp. (Ottawa, ON, Canada), www.corel.com

Truck: Chevy 3500 truck with Telsta bucket and scissor lifts, from Altec Industries (Birmingham, AL), (800) 958-2555 or www.altec.com

Vinyl: High-performance, cast vinyl, from FDC Graphic Films (South Bend, IN), (800) 634-7523 or www.fdcfilms.com

Welding: Millermatic® MIG welding machine, from Miller Corp. (Appleton, WI), (920) 734-9812 or www.millerwelds.com
 

More About Jamie and Identity Sign Group

Jamie Nelligan and John Scott, co-founders of Identity Sign Group (Pottstown, PA), have more than 30 combined years of sign-industry experience. The company offers design, fabrication, project-management, installation and permit- and survey-management services. Nelligan said, “We understand that, as business owners, your success is ultimately based upon the presentation and projection of your company, which begins with your signage.”

He also noted using processes that help customers achieve LEED certification serves as a core company focus. For more information, visit www.identitysigngroup.com