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Main => Artwork => Topic started by: terabit on May 16, 2006, 11:00:12 pm

Title: Solid Black on a Marquee
Post by: terabit on May 16, 2006, 11:00:12 pm

I had a marquee printed at a local printer and it looks great without a backlight, but when I light the marquee up, the black areas are not true black. You can see the light through them. It looks like a washed out grey. Anybody know if this is true with the places on-line like Mame Marquees or any others that specialize in marquees? Here is an expample of the marquee.
(http://www.lhdesign.net/xtended_play4.jpg)
Thanks
Glenn

Title: Re: Solid Black on a Marquee
Post by: DaveMMR on May 16, 2006, 11:18:04 pm

Print a second copy of the marquee and cut out the non-black areas with an exacto blade.  Line up both copies together and, when lit, the black should be a whole lot darker.  This is what the maker of the Roswell cabinet (http://www.ourvictorianhouse.com/CraigsArcade/Roswell%2088201/Roswell.html) did.

EDIT: The marquee with the cut-outs should be behind the complete one, of course.

Title: Re: Solid Black on a Marquee
Post by: alexandro98 on May 17, 2006, 01:13:22 am

If you have the original file that you had printed, another option would be to edit out all the colors except the black and print it out. And when you stack it the light will shine thru the blank areas but will be blocked in the black areas.

Here I did a quick example of what i mean:
(http://www.alexandro98.com/test001.jpg)


edit: typos

Title: Re: Solid Black on a Marquee
Post by: electricd on May 17, 2006, 08:14:23 am

Instead of cutting everything with a knife, why not just make another marquee where all the non-black areas are white in effect letting most of the light through.  It might be worth a shot :)

Title: Re: Solid Black on a Marquee
Post by: glgaz on May 17, 2006, 12:58:04 pm

/\ 

Makes sense to me.  Probably the easiest route.

Title: Re: Solid Black on a Marquee
Post by: alexandro98 on May 17, 2006, 06:41:00 pm

Quote from: electricd on May 17, 2006, 08:14:23 am

Instead of cutting everything with a knife, why not just make another marquee where all the non-black areas are white in effect letting most of the light through.  It might be worth a shot :)

Thats same exact thing I said.

Title: Re: Solid Black on a Marquee
Post by: PoDunkMoFo on May 18, 2006, 06:05:32 pm

If you have enough room you could also put a piece of whaite plex behing it to diffuse the light.  Might work, might not.

Title: Re: Solid Black on a Marquee
Post by: scottp on May 20, 2006, 10:37:56 am

That is the problem with most local printers, they don't specialize in printing for backlighting.  After testing around 10 3rd party inks (and wasting a lot of material/ink and busting a few printers...) we ended up going with two different ink manufactures, one for the black and another for the color ink.  We have a very deep black.  Unless your using a industrial spot light to backlight, it won't show the light through our black. 

Scott
www.mamemarquees.com

Title: Re: Solid Black on a Marquee
Post by: terabit on May 22, 2006, 09:30:45 pm

Thanks Scott, I will call you guys this week to find out what format I need to send to you and where to FTP.
Thanks
Glenn