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Failing Black Di-Lite Board, any ideas?
Hey guys, hope your all good. Just a quick question. We did this simple sign a year ago for a customer. It was just Black 3mm aluminium composite with white lettering on top. We had a call last week saying that there were strange marks over the black… i was thinking of perhaps seeing dribbles, but no. there seems to be lots of dots appearing all over ( looks like its under the lettering)??. Im yet to see it in person, but thought id ask if anyone else has seen something like this before?
Thanks
Ben
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5 Replies
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Hi
We’ve had this on 3 occasions over the years and all on black ACM, all of them on different brands from different suppliers but none of them were Di-lite.
It looked exactly like yours and it is very small surface pitting that leaves a much bigger circle of staining. We are going back to a site next week to wrap a fascia with black gloss vinyl – after its lightly sanded with the finest grit sandpaper you can’t see any physical blemish once the vinyl is over the top. This was for a job installed a few years back and we are doing it as a gesture of good will. Clearly a fault with the black top coat on the ACM but we can’t get anything back from our supplier as they had gone away (back now but trading under different ownership albeit using one of their historical names).
I’d try for a refund of the board cost from your supplier – the board should last at least 1 year! You’ll not get anything for your consequential costs though. Good luck.
Cheers
Dave -
I had very much the same problem about a year ago, on a sign that was up about 2 years, and it was also Black.
the entire face had gone dull matt, with along lower section all pitted and streaked where water had ran down over time.
This was Alcobest from Righton and in their defence, when we sent photos and complained we had two new 10×5 sheets sent out next day, no questions asked. Yes it was good of them to do this and very good customer service, but we still had to rectify the job.
I was lucky, our customer decided to use the fact we were going to do this FOC, he decided just to renew the sign completely and we were paid second time round.
Based on this post and due to this being across various brands but all in BLACK, i imagine this must be a problem area. was going to say a grey area, but not to describe black? :awkward: 😆 -
We done a job which will be 10 years old next June for a local sign company. The router cut fascia is 6000x800mm and is all made from gloss black genuine DiBond ACM. Have to say have not had any problems with that product and apart from some fluorescent tubes needing replacing (yes it is that old!) it still looks pretty good and walk past in on a regular basis. Especially given the fact that it is on the seafront road in Worthing facing the sea, which is probably only about 100-150 feet away at high tide! (doesn’t look like the sign gets much maintenance either). To be honest we only ever now use Alupanel from Perspex or DiBond from Amari and (touch wood) not really had any problems (apart from colour variation from batch to batch but that is a lesson learnt now!)
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I’ve seen problems develop with brushed aluminium composite (i.e Butler Dibond equivalent) – non dibond versions seem to be prone to developing marks on the face which was never a problem with Butler Dibond itself.
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I think the Butler DiBond is one of the few brushed aluminium composites rated for outside use as it has a lacquer over the top of it. A lot of them are just brushed aluminium with no protection and so just oxidizes over time.
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