Producing a Rigid Plastic Custom Field Stencil from a Logo Image


GLADIATORS Logo
Customer Provided
Rigid Plastic Custom Stencil
Manufactured


Painted Rigid Plastic Custom Stencil,
7' tall by 10' wide  		Testimonial from customer: "The baseball team made the state playoffs and they had a chance to use the stencil before the home game series this week. Attached is a photo - everyone is extremely proud of the field logo and totally impressed with how it turned out.
Thanks again, Reese, 05/10/12"

See further testimonial in blog comment section below.

From time to time we get a requirement where a customer wants a more rigid custom field stencil than our traditional flexible sheet plastic custom field stencil. Typically these rigid stencils are smaller in size are are used on different surfaces such as a running or pavement surface.

With new computer numerical control (CNC) router technology a digital image, preferably in vector graphic 2-D format (such as a .eps file), can be easily manipulated to produce a computer-aided design (CAD) file that a CNC tool uses to cut/route material from different types of sheet material. In our case we like using the 3/16" thick High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) Sheeting, typically a 4' x 8' sheet, which has sufficient strength when material is removed from the sheet yet light weight enough to be easily moved by one or two people.

The Gladiators rigid stencil shown above is approximately 7' in height by 10' wide when painted. The customer wanted to be able to use this for both softball and baseball fields so two separate letter stencils were cut so the could be easily aligned with the existing stencil. The SOFTBALL and BASEBALL lettering is approximately 6.5" tall when painted.

The white areas on the second image with three larger sections, approximately 8' tall by 4' wide, is where the sheet plastic is removed by the CNC router. The customer when painting this stencil will first align the three sections and paint the areas where the sheet plastic was removed. Then they will remove the stencil and fill in the other areas with the appropriate color scheme as well as where the sheet plastic bracing was left in place. This procedure I commonly describe as "painting by the numbers" or "painting within the lines". The two smaller letter stencils, SOFTBALL and BASEBALL will be overlaid after the first stencil is removed. These two smaller stencils are manufactured to ensure quick alignment with the larger stencils' border.

It is important for the customer to understand the image relationships to expected stencil sizes, especially as it relates the lettering in a logo. For example, a sample logo that is 8" wide by 6" tall would produce a custom stencil that is 13.3' wide by 10' tall (using a standard ratio, 8/6 = x/10 which is 80/6= x or 13.3). So if there was lettering in the logo that was only 1/8th of inch tall or .125" the stencil letter would be only 2.5 inches (all measurements in inches, .125/6=x/120 which is .125*120/6=x or 2.5). From a spectator standpoint we recommend that letters be no smaller than 12" tall, preferably 24-36" tall. From this example you can better understand that the detail size in an logo image such as borders and mascot definition and clarity has a direct impact on the field visibility when the custom stencil is painted.

From a pricing standpoint the rigid custom field stencil is typically double the cost of a flexible customer field stencil and the shipping costs are 3-5 times as much since a rigid stencil will be shipped by a common LTL carrier versus a package carrier.

Tru Mark will provide you with a price quote for either type of stencil by emailing a good quality image file (especially in .eps format for rigid stencils while a very high quality (pixel density) in .jpg format for flexible stencils) that is usable with an expected stencil size or a proposed location on the sports field. We can provide a couple different price quotes based on different sizes.

Labels: , ,