We set out to look at how durable acrylic is and to discover what life expectancy you would expect from your sign.
Where glass fails or is not suitable for use, Acrylic is the next best thing. At half the weight of glass and 10x the resistance, it can be used anywhere internally and externally and comes in a range of sizes and colours. It can be cut to a required design (we use a CNC router), folded, welded and flame polished.
As with any sign material, there will always be positives and negatives and acrylic is no different.
100% Water Resistant
Acrylic is 100% resistant to water and also to a number of everyday chemicals like diesel, paraffin and sulphuric acid, but more corrosive products would need to be identified via. a data sheet from the acrylic supplier. Acrylic is shatterproof, but can fracture into pieces if it suffers trauma ie: being dropped or hit with force.
With regard to to the life expectancy of an acrylic sign, readily available information online shows conflicting times from 5 to 30 years! However, 5 to 10 years seems to be the most accurate, Acrylic will resist fading/degrading within this time period.
Out in The Field!
Out of curiosity we decided to investigate one of our own installations from over six years ago using photos from then and now to see if any degeneration had occurred, you can see it has lasted very well and almost looks as good as new…
