On The Rail Designs is a comapny I started. We build custom acrylic signs for horse fencing. On The Rail Designs makes dressage letters out of a single piece of acrylic which we bend to fit snug on vinyl fence rails. Our letters attach on all four sides of the rail and can be easily removed. Our letters will not fade in the sun and will withstand the outdoor conditions.
It started out with my neighbor having the problem of not being able to find any dressage letters to hand on her fencing. Most dressage letters on the market are cheap quality and made to sit on the ground. Most would get blown over or away in almost every storm. She wanted something she can set up once and won’t have to touch again. It also needed to be clean looking. I started designing several prototypes. I first tried gluing several acrylic pieces together. The joints were weak so I had to redesign them. I researched several different design techniques and saw a tool that took full pieces of acrylic and bent them into the shape you wanted. I knew this is the route I needed to go.
I design and built my own acrylic bender. I bought a power supply from Amazon and took it apart. I attached each wire to a different end of nichrome wire so the electricity would run through the nichrome wire. In the picture below the red line is the nichrome wire heated up. This is what creates the heat to melt the acrylic. After holding your piece of acrylic over the wire for 30 sec. you can bend it at any angle. It takes about 1 min. to harden and then you have a custom bent piece of acrlyic.
Comments