Vinyl Sign Letters:
The Ultimate In
Sign Versatility

Lettering is the cornerstone of sign making. Vinyl sign letters are the key to creating a successful sign that gets your message through to lots of people.

Letters can be produced many ways. They can be painted onto a sign surface, cut from materials, shaped in molds, assembled from parts glued or welded into place, even formed from tubes of neon lighting. Each method has its advantages.

Vinyl sign lettering has quite a number of strengths that serve a variety of sign needs. Let's explore this flexible and adaptable material and discover the many things you can do with vinyl lettering.

We invite you to look around our website and help yourself to the information we have collected for you all in one place. You're sure to find the answers you need to make your own successful signs!

If you already know what kind of vinyl sign letters you want, we personally recommend the following top quality sign businesses for your vinyl lettering needs. Visit their websites using the handy links below. Just like us, they're also ready to help you find the vinyl lettering you need or let you make your own, and will even show you how to apply them to your signs.

Shop Custom Vinyl Lettering Online at BuildASign.com!

Make Your Own Vinyl Lettering at Custom-Vinyl-Lettering.net

Now let's take a look at the most common uses for vinyl sign letters.

Vinyl Letters And More

Below is a list of some of the many uses of vinyl sign letters and decals. Each section links to a page with more information about each subject and includes tips about where and how to put them to work for you.

• Vinyl Sign Lettering - here is your guide for choosing vinyl lettering used for making signs of all types.
  
  
• Vinyl Wall Lettering - text applied directly to a wall surface creating an elegant sign all by themselves.
  
  
• Vinyl Wall Graphics - signs made with decals including graphics and even photo images for business or personal uses.



• Vinyl Window Lettering - signs created by applying letters to windows such as those found in store fronts.
  
  
• Vinyl Vehicle Lettering - letters that are applied to the windows, doors or other surfaces of cars, trucks and boats. A great way to advertise a business!



• Self Adhesive Lettering - sheets of precut vinyl letters ready to be used for a variety of sign applications.

What Is Vinyl?

Vinyl is a synthetic material composed of two chemical elements.

The first is ethylene, derived from hydrocarbon-based materials like natural gas or petroleum. The difference between vinyl and other substances created from hydrocarbon raw materials is the other element used in its production: chlorine.

Chlorine comes from a solution of water and salt, or brine. Salt is common and therefore easy and inexpensive to find or produce. This gives vinyl the advantage of being cheaper and more cost effective to use than materials made solely or primarily from hydrocarbons.

There's No Limit

Cost effective. Those are like magic words to any business owner. Vinyl is cheaper and easier to come by than many of the other materials used to make sign letters, so it's better for the budget.

Vinyl is versatile. Chlorine is naturally flame retardant making it useful for protective applications like insulation for wires.

By adding modifiers and other chemical additives to vinyl resin, a vinyl compound is produced. The vinyl can be thin and flat or thick and rigid, even semi-liquid. It can be made tough and flexible for a limitless variety of applications, including very thin sheets on a paper backing rolled onto tubes and used for making adhesive decals.

Vinyl can also be clear or any shade of color imaginable. Pigments added to the material create colors that are more resistant to fading than surface applied inks or paints alone. This means that acrylic business signs made with vinyl sign letters will last longer.

The surface of thin vinyl sheets can be made to accept coatings that protect inks or paints used to add graphics to the material. It can also accept adhesive substances to create decals that stick to surfaces like walls, other plastics or glass.

Vinyl is a powerful and superior tool for the sign maker or the sign user.

From Vinyl Sheet To Adhesive Letters

Remember those rolls of thin vinyl sheets? They're ready to be turned into vinyl sign letters by machines called vinyl sign cutters or plotters.

The roll of adhesive vinyl is placed in the machine. Motors roll and unroll the tube along the length or the sheet back and forth. The plotter has a small sharp blade on an arm that moves back and forth along the width of the vinyl sheet. The combination of these two movements slices the vinyl into shapes drawn with computer software. It's kind of similar to an Etch-A-Sketch.

The blade is adjusted to cut only the vinyl without touching the paper backing that the vinyl sheet sits on. This way the letters stay on the backing until needed and can be peeled off and applied to surfaces. Some plotters even have sensors that control this ultra light touch needed to cut vinyl sign lettering.

The plotter cuts paths created with computer software such as CAD and graphic art applications. Just about anything that can be draw in two dimensions can be cut in vinyl. The program is attached to the plotter and works in much the same way as an ink jet or laser printer.

In fact, plotters often combine vinyl cutting with printing. It works as an inkjet printer by printing graphic images onto the vinyl surface, then cutting out the shapes to make adhesive decals. Letters can be combined to form text on decals, or colored sheets can be cut to form separate letters that form the message on the sign.

Vinyl sign letters can be placed on any smooth sign surface like plastic or wood to create a professional looking sign. Vinyl letters can even create a sign all by themselves when applied right to a surface like a wall or window.

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