Frameless display - joining of panels

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Adam
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Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Adam »

Hi to all,

I am interested in standoffs kits for double-glass (acrylic) frameless display in a floating style.

The trick is that I must arrange elements between two 4mm thick acrylic panels first, without using double-sided tape, and then press 2 panels together so the elements are straight and do not fall out. Such product is subsequently sent to my client and only THEN she or he can mount it on the wall.

Usually, the standoffs are attached to the wall first and only then the 2 panels are assembled together while mounting them on the wall.

I cannot use any clips mounted on the edges neither (clips which would hold two panels temporality together until standard standoffs are installed) – this would be too dangerous, because the client could make a mistake and all elements could fall out from between 2 panels.

Do you know any mounting kit/system which would allow me to achieve the above? I.e. 2 glass (or acrylic) panels are first put together tightly (on the table or on the floor), and only THEN mounted using standoffs?

I prepared a presentation picture (attached) of what I have in mind - a kind of threaded “male and female” bushes, fitting into each other, which would hold 2 panels tightly together and at the same time have a hole (diameter of about 13 mm) for the screw which passes through it into the standoff.

Adam
3-eng.jpg
I would appreciate any advice.

Greetings from chilly Gdynia in Poland,
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Not your average framer »

Hi Adam,

I think that there may be a potential problem with this idea. The panels of course start out as being flat acrylic panels and you position your stamp onto one of these panels, lay the other panel on top and the fix the two panels together by screwing the retaining bushes tightly together. Unfortunately the stamps being printed on paper have thickness and to accommodate this thickness this will cause the two acrylic panels to bent slightly as the bushes are tightened.

The greatest clamping pressure will therefore be on the outermost stamps and any stamps in between these outmost stamps will most likely be not clamped at all, because the acrylic panels are now slightly curved and can no longer provide the necessary parallel clamping action. This creates the risk that any stamps inside these outer stamps may be possible to perhaps move out of position during handling, or even fall out due to not being clamped in position at all.

I am not really sure how this can be best overcome, while also giving no visible indication of how this can be achieved. This is a relatively difficult issue to easily solve. The concept sounds like a good one, but getting it to work perfectly may be a serious problem.
Mark Lacey

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GeoSpectrum
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by GeoSpectrum »

You might be able to achieve the mounting system with rivnuts or clinch nuts and a threaded rod. You may need to insert a alloy bush in between.
8937467F-F71B-408A-A39C-E8C18545C2DD.jpeg
9BBEC93B-7CF1-4591-8734-8DAD9361D952.jpeg
Alan Huntley
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Bespoke Easels and Self-assembly tray frames
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Not your average framer »

Hi Adam,

Have a look at brass screw binders. They generally have very neat shallow heads on both sides and are available in many different lengths, I think that these may be a step in the right direction. They are usually available from bookbinding suppliers. I've included a link below.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=brass+screw+b ... &ia=images
Mark Lacey

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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Not your average framer »

Are the acrylic panels going to be a ready made commercially available product, or will need to produce these yourself, or even get them made to order. Which ever you choose to do finely polished edges are a great finishing touch. Most people don't realise this, a very fine finish cut of only a few thousands of an inch need not generate any heat while cutting, but can very easily remove any saw cut marks from the edges. A final wet polish with some 1200 grit silicon carbide abrasive paper can provide a superb visual presentation of this edges.

It can be helpful to have a tiny drop of washing up liquid in the water used to wet the silicon carbide paper the minute little particule which get moved by gentile sanding tend to get caught up in the water form a sort of sludge which tends to help to lubricate the sanding action and help to get that really fine and smooth finish. The result sludge needs to be wiped away every now and then to observe the resulting finish so that you know when further sanding / polishing is no longer required.
Mark Lacey

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Adam
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Adam »

Thank you Mark. I must try first and see whether the middle stamps do not slide off. We can also use clips which are positioned by the edges, but I still see the same problem you have mentioned. It is below:

antyrama-klipsy.jpg

Nevertheless, we will try.

There is another system of rods and clips like below. It seems to be giving more support across, but just doesn't look good.

antyrama-klipsy2.jpg
antyrama-klipsy3.jpg

Do you think that double glass (not acrylic panel) would be better, i.e. would not bend? I guess so, just glass is much heavier...

We are trying to avoid the simplest idea, which is placing stamps in special mounts called hawids. The mounts could be glued to the back board or to the poster, but stamps would be untouched inside. The problem with this is that transparent foil of the mount give reflections, which is making visual effect poorer.

The panels will be made to order by a specialized service (one set is already being prepared). I will note all your remarks on the processing and finishing such panels.

I will see rivnuts (clinch nuts) and a threaded rod suggested by Alan, also screw binders. If we fail with double glass or double acrylic panels then we would have to use a back board. Just many philatelists love to see the back of the stamp.
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Not your average framer »

Glass can flex as well, the main difference being that when glass is already subjected to the added stress introduced by the very slight bending that glass become more brittle when subject to any kind of shock, so Acrylic is much better choice because it has a higher youngs modulus of elasticity. It definitely makes the best sense to go for acrylic. Also thicker acrylic always looks like a higher quality product than thinner acrilic, not everyone realises it be the cost of cutting and preparing these piece of acrylic is going to be a more significant cost than the cost of the acrylic material cost.

This means that the increased cost of thicker acrylic panels, if you get these made to order does not increase as much as you might be thinking if you double the thickness of the acrylic. Some of the easiest acrylic to obtain is available mainly in 2mm, or 4mm thick. Allowing for the manufacturing cost, switching from manufacturing from 2mm acrylic to 4mm should result in an overall cost increase to a lot less than the 100% that might at first sight seem to be a reasonable expectation.

Of course marketing people selling acrylic panel know that many people will be expecting most people to think that twice the thickness is going to cost twice the money, so it's an easy opportunity to grab some extra profit and guess what many suppliers of "of this self" panels are likely to be taking advantage of? As you have probably already noticed brass binding screws have quite large heads on the screws and bushes, so you might now need to employ 13mm holes to get the same visual presentation (and this might be an opportunity for a potential cost saving as well).
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
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Adam
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Adam »

Thank you Mark. I really appreciate your insights. It helps a lot.

I ordered 4mm thick acrylic panels. We will try first with 4 holes in the corners. Panels will be held together by bookbinding screws - we will see whether the stamps stay in place. This will be our trial, before figuring out how to use hollow rivets. The stamps will be placed on square, black cardboards and then those cardboards will be placed on a poster - in other words, there will be more thickness than the stamps themselves would generate. I hope the middle stamps won't fall out.

There are however larger philatelic items, like full sheets - those will be placed directly on the panel.

I thought that I could use neodymium magnets, meaning after joining panels with bookbinding screws, we could place in the wall 4 strong magnets which would hold the frame on the wall (instead of using standoffs). I wonder whether they would be strong enough.
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Not your average framer »

Instead of black cardboard, have consider placing the stamps on black sugar paper? It's got a slightly fluffy surface texture and as you screw up the fixing the fluffy texture would slightly compress, hopefully taking up any slight gap allowing any stamps in the middlle to have a little extra grip and there not being free to move. I would recommend that the brass binding screws, or whatever fixings that you decide to use are not to close to the corners of your acrylic panels, drilling these holes too close to the edges may create a potential weakness where cracks (stress failures) might develop over time. I am an ex-engineer originally involved in product design and as a result, I can tell you that stress failures and stress related cracks always develop on the out side surfaces of the material first.

I would recommend perhaps 25mm (maybe more) distance betwwen the holes and the outer edges of the panels. Stress failures have to begin somewhere and this is commonly at a minute surface defect (the place of least resistance), this is why it is helpful to polish the outer edges of the acrylic panels. As you will probably under stand, the additional thickness caused by the stamp, will means that the corners of the acrylic panel will have a slight bent across the location of the screw hole at 45 degrees due to the fact that the outer edges of the acrylic panel need to bend slightly at the corners. This is a good reason to allow enough distance between the screw holes and the outside edges of the panels.

The larger distance between the holes and the outside edges provides for a large area of acrylic to allow for speading any resulting stress over a greater volume of acrylic and therefore less stress per unit area and volume. I think that if you look at pictures of suppliers pictures of "off the shelf" ready made acrylic panels, you will probably find that the screw holes are spaced away from the outside edges for the same reason. I think that this can also add to the visual appearance as well, as having the screws to close to the outside edges does not necessarily look quite as good.
Mark Lacey

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Adam
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Adam »

Thank you Mark.

Black sugar paper is a great idea to keep the stamp in place. I have one worry though: would the course surface of the paper damage the gum on the reverse side of the stamp? The stamp's gum is important for sollectors - sometimes more important than the front side :)

The holes for the fixings will be more than 2,5 cm away from the edge.

My brother had another idea - I wonder what you think about it. If the panels were bent before assembly along longer axis, would it secure a better pressure on stamps? In other words, we would have 2 slightly concaved panels and we would join them like below:

bent-panels.jpg

I can ask the guys how are cutting the panels to bent them anyhow, I mean in any direction. They prepare elements in all sort of shapes from acrylic.

My brother also suggested to place more screws along the edges, like 3 along each edge (8 altogether), to get a better pressure and a better pressure distribution across the whole surfaces.

I wonder what do you think.
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Not your average framer »

I'm not sure about using to many screws, in case it detracts from the overall presentation. I also am not sure what effect bendiing the acrylic before hand would have as a longer term concern. I am thinking maybe not.

Have you made a prototype to see how much of an issue these things might actually be? Perhaps we are worrying unnecessarily about some of this!
Mark Lacey

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Adam
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Adam »

Hi Mark,

I will be doing the prototype tomorrow and will let you know :)
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Adam »

Hi Mark,

You were right 100%. We tried with 4 screws in the corners - stamps were moving between panels. Panels were bending and leaving a 1mm space along each side. Then we drilled extra 4 holes in the middle of each side of the panels, but the stamps were kept moving. We then decided to use some better way of attaching both panels - with bolts and cap nuts (cup nuts like below).

cup-nut.jpg
cup-nut.jpg (34.52 KiB) Viewed 3164 times

Bolts and cup nuts gave us better control then fancy connectors and they looked very well. However, stamps kept moving.

I then placed polyamide washers inbetween panels, in hope to distribute the pressure of one panel against the other one more evenly, like below.

polyamide-washer.jpg

The washers were roughly the same thickness as the background poster we use and the little black card stocks' squares which we use for the stamps, but the stamps kept moving. I was close to throwing the panels and stamps out of the window.

Then I realised that we had to attach or affix the stamps somehow. I decided to use transparent photo corners, like below.

transparent-photo-corners.jpg

With many stamps - each one armed with 4 affixing corners - you just start seeing those plastic triangles everywhere. Distracting.

By the end I got an ingenious idea of creating mini passepartouts: the bottom black card stock square is the background for the stamp, and the top one is a "window" of almost the same size as the stamp (0.5m - 1mm space left on each side), like below.

mini-passepartout.jpg

I glued together both such prepared layers, then glued the bootom one to the poster (that's how it meant to be originally), placed polyamide washers inbetween panels and screwed my cup nuts onto the screws and... voilà! I was shaking those panels, rotating them in all directions, bumping their edges very hard against the carpet (letting them fall on the edge from quite a height) and they stayed put in place. Success! Stamps look lovely, without being obscured by reflections coming from plastic strips of typical stamp mounts.

Now I need to examine whether 4 screws would be enough, and how to cut out nice, equal and straight rectangular openings in the top card stocks. But I am very happy!
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Not your average framer »

Hi Adam,

What are you using to cut out your little pieces of card stock? May I suggest not fiddling about trying to hold little pieces of card stocl with your fingers. It is not particularly conducive too producing a perfect job. I would suggest that it is much easier to cut each piece out from a larger piece of card stock with has been tapped down on to a small flat piece of MDF leaving the area where you wish to make the cuts clear from the tape used to hold the card stock securely in place of the MDF.

Then the cuts can be made using as cheap set of wood chisels and a small mallet, or perhaps a hammer. The chisels can be selected to provide the best match to the length of cut that you wish to make in the card stock. The chisel does not need too penetrate too deeply in to the MDF as long as it passes through the card stock producing a nice clean cut. If the chisel width is not quite enough to cut the full length that is required, the the existing part of the cut will be a good place to line up part of the chisel while cutting the rest of that straight cut.

The last bit to cut will need to be the outer cut lines, so that the piece of card stock which you are cutting remains joined the the taped down surrounding piece until all the other cuts have been completed. The glue, if liquid is probably most easily apllied using a fine artist brush. I'm not sure if I would find that using double sided adhesive tap would be the best method if the best degree of control and accuracy is of primary importance.
Mark Lacey

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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Adam »

Hello Mark,

Thank you very much. I have made the prototype "mini passepartouts" using my hands indeed. And scissors, to make it worse. However, it was just a trial.

I will definitely look for those chisels. It's a fantastic advice - I must look in the wood tools sections, not paper craft sections :D

I will post you with the final product.

Have a good weekend!
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Adam »

I found those square cutters in pursemaking section. Do you think they should serve the purpose?

square-chisels.jpg
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Not your average framer »

Are they n the right sizes for what you need? If so how do they work? The advantage of using chisels on bits of MDF is that you are hammering the chisel into a flat and relatively resilent surface. You will of course need to replace the MDF board at some time, because the surface of the MDF will be damaged as it is used. I'm guessing that these purse making cutters might require a different method of usage and maybe you need to find out a bit more of how these are intended to be used. Having said all that, they still might be a workable solution, so definitely worth checking them out a bit more.
Mark Lacey

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Adam
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Adam »

Hi Mark,

I am sorry for the delay, but we have been busy perfecting everything and now we are finally DONE.

Attached are the pictures of the first final product. We will use various elements which are joining the panels together, depending on the ocomposition of the poster.

The 2 hanging elements at the back of the panels will be changed in the future to 1 central, serrated element, which is more comfortable to use.

The cardboard frames were laser cut out to the tenth of millimeter - it works about 10 american cents per 1 little frame.

Also, we will be using cut-to-size aluminium frames for posters of different designs.

We think it looks fantastic!
Attachments
ZSRR Statki Badawcze 2 Serie MNH na Plakacie 1979-1980 3b.jpg
ZSRR Statki Badawcze 2 Serie MNH na Plakacie 1979-1980 5.jpg
ZSRR Statki Badawcze 2 Serie MNH na Plakacie 1979-1980 6.jpg
ZSRR Statki Badawcze 2 Serie MNH na Plakacie 1979-1980 7.jpg
ZSRR Statki Badawcze 2 Serie MNH na Plakacie 1979-1980 8.jpg
ZSRR Statki Badawcze 2 Serie MNH na Plakacie 1979-1980 9.jpg
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Re: Frameless display - joining of panels

Post by Not your average framer »

Hi Adam,

It looks great! I trust that the project costs worked out well for you and have permitted a worthwhile profit margin to meet your requirements. I know that this has been quite a steep learning curve and must have been a bit of a battle to finally pull everything together for the final result. It is an impressive result of which you should be rightly proud. A job well done and beautifully executed! Well done!

:clap: :clap: :clap:
Mark Lacey

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