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Our high school gym is replacing all the fabric sports banners with 4'x8' panels. The person wants PVC with grommets. They will be suspended with snap rings from a cable hanging about 25ft up. Is 1/8" pvc a suitable product? If not, what do you suggest? Thanksfor your advice in advance.
Will the panels stay flat? If they curl or bow you may be expected to alter the laws of physics to correct the problem. Adding any kind of stiffener of frame would increase weight. which brings up concern two,
What if one of these panels were to fall? From 25' up that could be nasty. Who would be liable? Protect yourself in your contract
Finally, some things that aren't broke don't need to be fixed. Fabric banners are traditional in a sports arena. I couldn't say rigid panels would be an improvement. And I never heard of a banner causing a concussion.
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Ernie, It sounds like another shop might be feeding bad info to the buyer (maybe they have an overstock of PVC). It's up to you to educate them. For this application, I'd be selling the customer the benefits of banners with pole pockets. They hang quite nicely, light weight and the poles keep them nice & smooth. If they're to be 2-sided, be sure to use a banner material with a blockout layer to avoid ghosting. You're the expert and you need to convince the customer who knows best!
------------------ Pete Kouchis Say it with SIGNS, Inc. Orland Park, IL, USA Phone: (708)460-3001 Fax: (708)460-3006
Excellence is doing a common thing in an uncommon way Booker T. Washington
Posts: 150 | From: Orland Park, IL, USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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Ernie, just a heads up on this PVC deal. I have found that this stuff gets brittle after awhile and snaps. You want to be careful hanging that stuff over a bunch of kids heads. If you framed it and mounted it on a wall, it will last, but becareful suspending it without some kind of frame. Peter
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We made a bunch of PVC pennants for a local high school in September. One for every sports award they ever one. I steered them away from banner material for several reasons...
They wanted yellow text on blue material. The blues that we can get banner material in wasn't close.
The felt banners with sewn on letters they showed us as examples had collected a lot of dust and dirt over the years. They looked faded just because of the dirt. Didn't look like they would stand up well to a washing and I couldn't see anyone going up the gym wall to blow off the dirt every few years.
The gym does not get any natural light and I didn't see the fading of PVC as a potential problem.
They were being mounted on the walls which avoids the potential problem of breaking off and falling on kids.
We made them 16 1/2" x 48" triangle shaped. This allowed us to get 9 out of one sheet of PVC with only 10 cuts and minium waste. Each pennant had a unique set of text in three or four rows. Each text line had to be tapered from large letters at the left to small letters at the right. This proved to be the biggest challange in laying them out. It took about 5 steps per line to get the tapered layout with Signlab 3. You will also need a good way to assure you have made every sport/year/award combination and have not missed any or duplicated any. We built a file for each pennant but looking back it would of been more efficient to build one for each sport.
We made 81 of these and it turned out to be a great job. We had lots of time to complete it and were able to fit it into a couple of slow periods. Probably have about 80 man hours into making them.
I have a feeling there is a good market in making these kinds of things for secondary schools. We have also made sports banners with all the participants names and academic scholarship boards for the same school. Also made a indoor welcome sign and a couple of cafateria rules signs for them. If you are in a urban area with lots of high schools around you could find a lot of business in those gyms and hallways.
------------------ Chuck Churchill, It's A Good Sign Inc. 3245 Harvester Rd, U-12 Burlington, Ont. Phone: 905-681-8775 Fax: 905-681-8945
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PVC will get very brittle-we had some panels hung below some fluorescent lights-which give off UV's. In about two or three years they were so brittle that they just snapped when you touched them. I would think that mercury vapor, metal halide or whattever kind of lights thay have in a gymnasium would also give off UV's. If it was me, I'd stick with the banner material, like one of the posts above says, it's a lot less likely to cause harm, if it did fall on someone.
------------------ Mike Duncan 2315 H Street Bellingham, WA 98225 eves 360-738-9846 days 360-671-7165 mikeduncan99@home.com $$ Supporter, 1998 & 1999
"Good Luck many times comes disguised as hard work."
[This message has been edited by Mike Duncan (edited January 29, 2000).]
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I tried to talk them into banners, but they insisted they wanted a plastic board that they could easily add additional lines to them. \they will be mounted to a brick wall, I believe screwed into the wall. Will 1/8 inch thick be alright , or should be go with 1/4"? I will not be doing the installation, the maintainance department will be installing. Should I drill oversized holes?
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