SignCraft Solutions Grows with SmartShop MT

SignCraft Solutions is a full-service sign manufacturing, installing, and “anything a customer needs, we’ll do,” company. Owner and founder Bob McEwen started SignCraft Solutions in Wake Forest, N.C., and has continued on for 10 years. During the Great Recession in 2009 and having been laid off, McEwen was looking for something to do. Through contacts and several interactions with the sign industry, McEwen decided to start his own company.

He started with just himself and one employee. Over 10 years, SignCraft Solutions has grown into a 6,700-sqft facility with 11 employees. Its production was originally limited to what they could produce by hand. Making the same straight and curved lines by hand was tedious and difficult to maintain consistency.

One of the most important upgrades to its production line was a SmartShop MT from Laguna Tools (Booth 8050). SignCraft Solutions selected the MT because of its versatility and budget-friendly price point. Because its work is so varied, it needed a machine that had routing as well as knife cutting capabilities. Through this SmartShop MT, SignCraft Solutions found that it’s like having another expert on staff.

“As we have good equipment, it’s like having another good employee. We can increase our speed of what we’re doing, our efficiency, and the equipment holds up well and continues to work well,” McEwen says.

When the machine arrived on a flatbed truck, they were able to easily remove it and put it into place. But since SignCraft Solutions was new to CNC, it selected to have a two-day, in-person training session. The LAGUNA tech arrived, and within two days it was ready to cut whatever it wanted. And in the few months it has had it, it’s already cutting signs out of aluminum, acrylic, plastic, foamcore, and coreplast. The mister option for the router bit allowed SignCraft to cut the aluminum.

The SmartShop MT is the most versatile machine Laguna Tools has created; it features an extended gantry, extra-large tool plate to add three additional tool devices, repeatability of up to +/- 0.001, an all-steel one-piece frame, and a six-zone phenolic vacuum table. Chosen by sign businesses across the country, the MT truly offers the one-stop machine for almost every production need.

Because SignCraft Solutions made the jump into CNC, they’ve been able to grow faster than they could have working by hand. And Laguna Tools has seen this same result with hundreds of other businesses.