Wall Mounted or Freestanding Acrylic Frames
Been in the sign and display business out of Ohio for going on 22 years now. Acrylic frames are probably 40% of what we move through the shop on any given month.
People call up asking for "plexiglass frames" all the time. Plexiglas is a brand name that Rohm and Haas trademarked back in the 1930s. The material is acrylic. Same stuff, different name. I stopped correcting customers on that years ago.
The wall mount situation
Most of the wall mounted units we sell go to real estate offices and medical practices. Real estate agents swap out their listings constantly. They want the slide-in style where you just drop a new sheet in from the top. The 8.5x11 size outsells everything else by a huge margin.
Standoff hardware is where guys get into trouble. The holes in the acrylic need to be slightly larger than the standoff barrel. Not a lot larger. Maybe a sixteenth of an inch. Drill it too tight and the acrylic cracks when you torque down the cap. Drill it too loose and the whole thing shifts on the wall. Had a contractor call last month complaining about cracked panels. Turned out he was using a standard twist bit instead of a plastics bit. The bit grabbed and spider-webbed three panels before he figured it out.
Drywall anchors are another thing. Anything bigger than 11x17 really needs to hit a stud or use a toggle bolt. Those little plastic anchors from the hardware store pull right out. We had a hotel in Columbus put up a 24x36 directory with drywall anchors. Six weeks later it was on the floor. Luckily nobody was standing under it.
Freestanding frames
The freestanding market breaks down pretty simple. Restaurants buy the small ones for table tents and specials. Hotels want them for the front desk. Retail stores use floor standing units at the entrance.
Table tent size runs 4x6 mostly. Some places use 5x7. The bent base design works fine for these smaller sizes. One piece of acrylic heated and bent at 90 degrees. Nothing fancy but it holds up.
Floor standing is a different animal. We sell a lot of the 22x28 poster size on a heavy base. Weighs about 15 pounds total. Sounds like overkill until you see what happens in a busy store. Shopping carts clip those things. Kids grab them. The weighted base keeps it upright.
Casters are popular for the big floor units but I tell people to think twice. Locking casters work great until someone forgets to lock them. Then you have a 6 foot sign holder rolling across the sales floor. Seen it happen.
Material thickness
Quarter inch acrylic is standard for anything wall mounted over 18x24. Below that size you can get away with 3/16 or even 1/8. The thinner stuff costs less obviously. But thin acrylic warps. Put a 1/8 inch panel in a south facing window and by August it looks like a potato chip.
Cast versus extruded comes up occasionally. Cast acrylic is poured into molds. Extruded is pushed through a die like pasta. Cast has better optical clarity and machines cleaner. Extruded costs maybe 20% less. For frames where people are looking through the acrylic at a document, cast is worth the upcharge. For sign holders where the graphic sits behind the panel, extruded works fine.
Edge finishing matters if the edge is visible. A raw cut edge looks milky. Flame polishing clears it up. The fabricator runs a hydrogen torch along the edge and the heat makes it transparent. Takes about 30 seconds per edge on a small frame.
What we keep in stock
The 8.5x11 wall mount with standoffs moves the fastest. We keep a couple hundred of those ready to ship. The 11x17 and 18x24 sizes we stock in smaller quantities. Anything bigger than that is cut to order.
Lead time on custom work runs two weeks typically. Rush jobs are possible if you catch us at the right time. Had a trade show customer last spring who needed fifty 16x20 frames in four days. We got it done but I aged about a year that week.
Hardware we stock in chrome, brushed stainless, and black. Satin brass was popular for a while but demand dropped off. We still have some sitting on the shelf from an order that never got picked up.
Shipping acrylic is its own headache. The stuff scratches if you look at it wrong. Every panel goes out with protective masking on both faces. Corrugated dividers between pieces. Foam corners on the outer box. Freight claims on damaged acrylic eat into margins fast so we pack heavy.
