Search the Community

GO BIG or GO HOME!!! Posting some pics of a 22" Deep Pole Sign Cabinet that a customer sent. If you're going to do a large, deep....Double Sided Cabinet or Monument Sign....do it right! No cheesy propietary Stiks, no fake Keystroke Constant Voltage Faux HO LED Lamps....resulting in poor luminance and "Usable Light"... Do it Cost Effective, and do it "Simply".......just chop some angles, tap 'em in and apply some Big Boy SunFires. The costs of using 1"x1" angle, 1" Square Tubing comes out to about $1.75 a foot. 12' Rows spaced just Like real HO Fluorescent Lamps, and space 12" module to module and you'll understand why these are called "SunFire". Sit back and observe the Disgusting amount of light these Magnificent BrightON SunFire LEDs produce! You'll end up with Competitive Light...NOT Usable Light. Using the BrightON SunFire LED Modules for Double Sided Cabinets you're looking at $6.50 per foot for DS, compared to Proprietary Systems costing $13 to $20 per foot Think of the cost saving annually....why pay extra for less light and for method of attachment costs?? Constant Current NOT Constant Voltage for Even/Consistent Lighting....High Efficiency (Light per Power)....Real White...24 Volt & Under Driven for Long Life!!!! How to make this system even better? Team up the BrightON SunFires with some France Lighting Solutions TruPower LED Power Supplies Seeing is BELIEVING!!

Are a lot of you using LED's for Cabinet Lighting, new and retrofits? I'm curious about your input on the brightness appearance. Is it as good as Fluorescent lamps (T8's and T12's)? What products have you been using for this? Thanks Erik

The Sign Syndicate is now stocking and distributing the high brightness American Made Axiom AXLE9-XB LED modules at $2.00 per module or $4.00 per foot with Nichia of Japan diodes along with their military grade power supplies that we have been selling for some time now. For those that don't know or are new to the site, The Sign Syndicate has been running the only public Neon & LED comparison tests since 2008 starting with The Great White Hope. We've been testing just about every Neon & LED Lamp that's out on the market throughout our various tests. The Axiom LED was just about the winner when it came to the high powered LEDs, they were side by side with the GE Tetra PowerMax. What put Axiom at the the top was price, it was about 1/5th the price and ended up being slightly brighter by a few foot candles after 36,000 hours (12 sign years at 8 hrs a day) of operation and they were just a shy in brightness to that of the Tri-Phosphor Neon Lamps. That was the class of 2008..... Now.....we have the Great White Hope II which started at the beginning of this year, and Axiom just got better being added in this month September 2014. We now have a light source that is just a hair under the brightness of a 13mm EGL DL65 Tri-Phosphor Neon Lamp running at 60ma.....That's Sickly bright!!! GWH II Test Comparison - Axiom AXLE9-XB (channel located on top) The Axiom AXLE9-XB is a very good alternative/option to Tri-Phosphor Neon & Fluorescent lamps for large channel letters and sign cabinets. The wow factor to the Axiom LED module is that you get a two for one LED module with the Axiom AXLE9-XB LED. I demonstrated it in a video below. You can use the module with or in a 12 volt system/power supply under driving it and use it as a .5 watt module, and you just about have the brightest module in Project Tighty Whitey, and the highest Foot Candle per Watt. Or... You can use run it on a 14.7 volt system and really using it as intended and where it's driving the Nichia of Japan LEDs at optimum with the Axiom PS6012 Power Supplies which are manually adjustable from 10.5 volts to 15 volts and now use it as a 1.6 High Brightness LED as used in the Great White Hope II. Axiom PS6012 60Watt Power Supply The AXIOM LED AXLE9-XB Specs Nichia of Japan LEDs For Maximum Lifetime LM80 Tested 250-260 Lumens Per Module, 500 Lumens Per Foot UL Recognized For Wet Locations & Listed in the UL SAM Up To 60˚C Ambient Operating Temperature Just as Bright As A 13mm 60ma Tri-Phosphor Neon Lamp Under Driven on a 12v System, Optimum & Made For a 15v System Measures at 1.325" Long x .75" Wide, 1/8" High AXIOM LED AXLE9-XB Demonstration Video You can order the Axiom AXLE9-XB Modules and Axiom PS6012 straight from our online shopping cart here. You can contact us by phone with any inquiries or questions and also to place orders (858) 880-1400 or by email orders@thesignsyndicate.com

So I came across this over the weekend on Sloan LED's Sign Box II and thought I'd post here for anyone interested to kick it around on their spare time. I didn't even have to do much on this one myself but one thing I did see on the Fluorescent side of things is a lot of fumbling around for something that is pretty simple with the simplest kind of knockdown raceway that anyone can just about pick up from their local hardware stores these days. I thought I would finish, or tell the rest of the story not mentioned, and that's what our expected cost would be using one over the other to save in time and what our customer will expect to pay for it. The Time Elapsed Video The final product with time Let's break this down on cost, and cost of operation and take a look at what we just saw and how it relates to our cost, what we will have to sell it for, and what the consumer will have to pay for. Let's just call this a 6' x 5' double sided cabinet. MATERIALS SHOP COST LIGHT SOURCES (30') 5) 6' Fluorescent T12 800ma Lamps - $6.04 each x 5 = $30.20 5) 6' Fluorescent T8 800ma Lamps - $22.00 each x 5 = $110.00 (Long Life Lamps) SignBoxII 20' Roll @ $390.54 each x 2 = $781.08 10' left over, or waste ($195.27) LAMP SOCKETS / CLAMPS/BRACKETS 10) HO Sockets $1.35 each x 10 = $13.50 Sloan LED's SignBox II LED Bag of 16 SignBox Clamps = $21.84 Brackets $7.62 each x 10 = $76.20 POWER SUPPLIES 1) HO Ballast (48' Load) = $62.95 2) Sloan LED Power Supplies $54.05 each x 2 = $108.10 POWER 8 Hours a day, 365 days a year. Annual cost of operation. T12 10.7 watts per foot x 30' = 321 watts 321 watts x 8hours x 365 days x $.12kwh / 1050 power correction = $107.12 annual cost of operation for 8 hours a day T8 8.37 watts per foot x 30' = 251.25 watts 251.25 watts x 8hours x 365 days x $.12kwh / 1050 power correction = $83.84 annual cost of operation for 8 hours a day Sloan LED's SignBox II 6 modules per foot @ .9 watts = 5.4 watts/foot x 30 = 162 watts 162 watts x 8hours x 365 days x $.12kwh / 1050 power correction = $54.06 annual cost of operation for 8 hours a day TOTAL SYSTEM COST BEFORE LABOR T12 = $106.65 T8 = $186.45 Sloan LED's SignBox II = $987.22 SAVING IN COST OF OPERATION Sloan LED's SignBox II vs T12 49% or $53.06 savings using SignBox in annual cost of operation Sloan LED's SignBox II vs T8 35% or $29.78 savings using SignBox in annual cost of operation MATERIAL COST SAVINGS T12 vs Sloan LED's SignBox II = $880.57 89% Saving using a T12 system vs Sloan LED's SignBox II T8 vs Sloan LED's SignBox II = $800.77 81% Saving using a T12 system vs Sloan LED's SignBox II CONSUMER RETURN ON INVESTMENT USING Sloan LED's SIGNBOX II T12 $880.57 Material Cost Saving / $54.06 Cost of Operation = 16.28 Years T8 $800.77 Material Cost Saving / $29.78 Cost of Operation = 29.55 Years VIDEO SAVING TIME 26 minutes 34 seconds 1 man labor at Journeyman = $33.00 per hour / 2 1/2 hour = $16.50 saving in labor using SignBoxII Now for the question to all of you. How much would you sell that 6'x5' (30sq') double sided cabinet for with simple faces (White with black lettering) as a Fluorescent and as a Sloan LED's SignBox II System fabrication & installation? What will your profit margin be? As a sign shop are we making money paying for and using a higher cost system? In the amount of time it takes to fabricate a complete sign cabinet are we loosing out on money keeping it conventional which has the lower cost and more proprietary (custom)? Now slightly away from this subject an in another subject to think about. What's to keep our trade to becoming as a commodity where the consumer can just go to HomeDepot and put their own LED system in where they just peel and stick? Now a day even schools have wide format printers, so vinyl and printing aren't really apart of the sign trade anymore. The only thing that's left IMO is sign painting, conventional back-lighting and Neon. When it comes to a mom & pop store sign just about anyone now a day can keep up a sheet of plex, anyone can print film, and just about anyone can pick up LEDs from a lighting store. What will keep our industry as a trade and be turned into a commodity which is the direction being pushed by those outside of our trade ? Large sign programs? Are we killing our own trade by not building unique and proprietary signs that does save money for us and the consumer? just some thoughts I'd throw out there since so many light source manufacturers are trying to dictate to the sign shop labor and cost and what they should be charging for retrofits like Ventex markets Are we soon to be just the middleman, the means for manufacturers to sell their products