Useful info for many industries: Plastics, Sign, Design, Display, Construction, Glass, DIY, Aerospace, and more!

Everything they do in New York City is big, and in recognition of Valentine’s Day this year, it’s a big ten-foot tall interactive red heart sculpture made of clear acrylic rods in the middle of Times Square that is getting all of the attention. Touch Sets the Heart in Motion Designed by an architectural firm that is named (coincidentally!) BIG, the sculpture consists of 400 vertical LED clear acrylic rods that form a cube around a suspended heart.  The colorful neon lights of Times Square are refracted in the rods.  A nearby podium invites passersby to place their hands
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Knowing how to clean acrylic correctly is key to preserving its attractive appearance.  Acrylic – which is also called Plexiglas, Lucite and Acrylite — is a popular alternative to glass for many applications because it is translucent, light weight and impact resistant.  Clear, colored and opaque acrylic is also available.  Because acrylic sheets and glazing are susceptible to scratches and abrasions as well as damage by some solvents, it is important to follow these guidelines for cleaning, repairing and protecting your acrylic items. Cleaning Acrylic The best way to clean acrylic is with a specialty cleaning product such as Novus No.1 or
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E&T Plastics, a leading distributor and manufacturer of custom plastic components, will be showcasing two additions to its product line – premium aluminum composite panels and Designboard by Vycom – at GlobalShop in Las Vegas, Nevada, February 29 – March 2.  This is the first time that E&T Plastics will be exhibiting at GlobalShop, the world’s largest annual event for store design, visual merchandising and shopper marketing. Both new offerings will help designers of retail displays and store fixtures create exciting and unique displays.   Aluminum composite panels (ACP) are a strong and lightweight material made of a high-density polyethylene center
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Working with acrylic is easy if you understand its properties and follow industry guidelines on how to handle it properly.  Using the correct tools is also important.  This article offers some practical tips on working with acrylic that will help you get started on your next project. What is Acrylic? Acrylic is a clear plastic that closely resembles glass but has many advantages, making it in excellent substitute in many applications.  Compared to glass, acrylic is: Lighter in weight by half Stronger and more impact resistant Offers better insulating properties More transparent Acrylic does have two main disadvantages compared to
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Plastic is a popular material for contractors, fabricators and hobbyists because it’s shatterproof, lightweight and temperature resistant, as well as relatively inexpensive.  Detailed instructions on how to build with plastic are easy to find on the Internet as well as in books and magazines.  Before you begin working with plastic, it’s important to choose the right adhesive and learn how to apply it correctly.  This article will give you a quick overview on glues for plastic and some tips on assembling plastic parts.  Links to other WebPages are provided where more detail may be helpful. Step One – Identify
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So you have a prized piece of artwork that you want to frame – a photo or your son and his bride, your kindergartner’s art project, or a watercolor painting by a renowned local artist – and you can’t decide whether to use real glass or acrylic for picture framing.  Although glass has been the historic favorite, the advantages provided by today’s acrylic framing sheets have made acrylic the preferred framing material amongst artists, galleries and consumers for both practical and aesthetics reasons. 7 Benefits of Acrylic Sheet for Picture Framing 1.  Light Weight Compared to glass, acrylic sheets for framing (
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Just five years after opening their sales and distribution center in Blaine, Minnesota, E&T Plastics has added 3,600-square-feet of warehousing space to the facility, increasing its overall size by 20 percent.  A nationwide supplier of plastic sheet, rod, tube and film, E&T Plastics opened the Minnesota office in April 2006 to service customers in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, western Wisconsin, Iowa and nearby Canada.  Ten sales and warehouse employees now work at the site. Outgrew the Facility According to Tom Tuckey, Branch Manager in Minnesota, the expansion allows E&T to stock up to ten additional
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It’s hard to believe, but a new study coming out of Colombia University reports that if all of the non-recycled plastics in the United States were converted into energy, we could produce enough energy to fuel 6 million cars annually or enough electricity to power 5.2 million households!  And, equally exciting, is that the technology to convert old plastics into an alternative energy source already exists today. Plastics as Alternative Energy Source: The Study According to Marco J. Castaldi, Associate Director of the Earth and Environmental Engineering (EEC), the department at Columbia University who published this study, “Plastics have a significantly
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Foam PVC sheets are an ideal substrate for printing graphics like advertising signage and photos, but working with this material can be difficult and requires special handling every step of the way.  Just ask any printing company how many times the foam PVC sheets they used looked clean, but after they were printed, fingerprints mysteriously appeared through the image.  It’s an extremely frustrating phenomenon because the fingerprints can’t be detected until after labor has been spent and ink has been laid down, at which time the sheet must then be scrapped. Attention Required by Manufacturers and Distributors The
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Just as plastic was the material-of-choice for California’s “Finish Fetish” group of sculptors in the 1960s, plastic is also the form and content of artwork produced by contemporary artist Steve Hough of Chicago.  Inspired by the group’s progressive use of “space-age” materials such as resins, HD foam, aerospace alloys and auto-paint, Hough is equally successful converting that mass-produced commodity material called plastic into a captivating art form. (Click images to enlarge) Shimmering Ripples are his Trademark Hough’s work can be described as a study of glistening, gentle ripples, much like you’d see surrounding an object that
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