City Neon, Inc., has been around since the 1950s, and in that time, the shop has seen many lighting trends come and go.
城市霓虹灯（City Neon）有限公司建立于20世纪50年代，那时，城市霓虹灯（公司名称）见证了很多亮化潮流的兴衰。
Today the company handles mostly LED projects, but they still get requests for the occasional large neon projec-such as the one they’ve been working on for Primanti Bros., a chain of sandwich - out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The chain has recently expanded to new locations in the Pennsylvania and Ohio area, and it wanted to maintain the original look it had when it opened over fifty yearsago.
今天，这个公司仍然掌握着绝大多数的LED项目。但是，它们仍然竭尽全力争取偶尔会有的霓虹灯项目，例如，他们正在做的一个项目，是一家位于匹兹堡的三明治连锁店Primanti Bros.。其连锁店已经由宾夕法尼亚州拓展到俄亥俄州了，但他想要保持50年前刚开业时的面貌。
City Neon worked to provide the signage for over ten new locations, including a pylon sign, three wall signs, and one sandwich logo for each new restaurant. That adds up to a lot of red neon that City Neon had to bend in-house.
城市霓虹灯同时在十个不同的地点安装标识，其中包括一个桥塔标识，三个墙体标识以及为每个新餐馆安装三明治LOGO。三明治LOGO里包含很多红色的霓虹灯，City Neon不得不将它们藏在字里面。
In fact, the hardest part of the fabrication was keeping up with the magnitude of work. So when the shop had signs due at the same time for two locations, logistics won out. “One project is about three weeks of neon. So two projects at once due in five weeks was just impossible for our neon guy to do,” says Chris Atkins, operations manager of City Neon. “So we ended up subbing half of one job out.”
事实上，安装最困难的地方是不容易把握工作量，当餐馆同时有两个以上的地方开业时，City Neon公司的后勤就要崩溃了。每一个项目都需要三周时间，所以，对于我们这些霓虹灯安装技工来说，五周完成两个安装项目来说是不可能的。
Pylon Signs桥塔标识
The new locations include eighteen- to thirty-foot-tall pylon signs with open-face red neon channel letters. The lone expecation is the York, Pennsylvania location, which features an eighty-foot-tall pylon sign City Neon fabricated the backs of the channel letters from aluminum using its Gerber Sabre™ router. With the Super Channel Bender from Adams Tech, the shop bent the channel letter sides
桥塔标识包括18至30英尺高的红色霓虹灯发光字，约克郡的桥塔标识是一个例外，足足有80英尺高。City Neon公司从发光字的铝合金外壳背后着手安装。将发光字弯曲隐藏在金属字外壳里。
City Neon used a Norlok machine to attach the sides to the back. This “clinching” method of attachment cuts back on waste because it punches the metal into itself without the need for other fasteners. For the main portion of the pylon sign, Primanti Bros. wanted to maintain a very particular look.
City Neon公司使用Norlok机器将发光字附着在金属字上，这种附着方法可以有效减少浪费，因为它可以直接将和金属融合在一起不需要其他的辅助器件。Primanti Bros.想维持桥塔标识独特的外观。
“They try to stay with an I-beam, industrial look to maintain the Pittsburgh, ‘steel city’ kind of thing,” says Atkins. “What we did to keep that look was use an I beam, but it’s kind of hard to mount channel-letters to an I-beam.” So their solution was to build a raceway to house inside of the I-beam .The Sign Comprace way is hingeable and attaches to the I-beam .It houses all of the wiring and power supplies, which made adding the channel letters later easier.
Atkins说：“他们想保持标识的‘工’字造型，就像一提到匹兹堡，大家就会想到它是一所工业城市一样。为了保持这样的形象，我们要做的就是使用‘工’字造型的标识，但是，用发光字组装成‘工’字很难。”他们想出的方法就是在字里面做成赛车跑道的形式，作为发光字的安装轨道，也可以将电线和电源藏在里面，这样一来安装任务就很轻松了。
Wall Cabinets墙体灯箱
Each restaurant received three illuminated wall cabinets, which ranged in size from four to five feet tall and ten to twenty-two feet long. The cabinets were painted with a combination of Matthews Paint and AkzoNobel’s GRIP-GARD® paints. “We painted it, stenciled it with vinyl, and then painted it again to give it two colors,” explains Atkins. The neon lettering that had been bent in-house was attached to the cabinets with tube supports. Meanwhile the transformers and wiring were housed inside the cabinets.
每个餐厅都有三个亮化墙柜，大小各异，约有4到5英尺高，10到22英尺长。灯箱的外壳都是焊接在一起的铝制长方形管，灯箱上喷绘了Matthews和AkzoNobel的绘画作品，Atkins说：“我们把画刻在亚克力板上，制成模板，便于用不同的颜色印刷。”弯曲成行的发光字在金属字外壳里固定在管支架上。同时，变压器和电线安置在灯箱内部。
Sandwich Logos三明治标识
For the sandwich logo signs, City Neon digitally printed the image on an ACM panel using an Epson SureColor® S30670 printer. A neon ring runs around the panel and was attached with tube supports.
对于三明治标识，City Neon用SureColor® S30670打印机将图案在ACM板上进行数码打印。将霓虹灯条安装绕在ACM板上，然后粘在金属字凹槽中。
Order Up! Install开工！安装
City Neon also installed all of the signage at the new locations. For the pylon and wall cabinets, the shop used a modular build process that allowed them to install the pylon sign in four to six hours and the wall cabinetsin two to three hours-with the wiring as well. Each wall cabinet had 90-degree angle pieces with holes in them, and these pieces were used to mount the signs. (Note: Depending on the wall material, the cabinets were either bolted, lagged, or all threaded to the wall.)
City Neon也接受了其他地点的标识安装，对于桥塔和墙体灯箱，标识店使用模块化的构建过程，可以让他们在4到6个小时内完成指示灯标识，2到3个小时内完成墙体灯箱安装。每个墙柜都有90度带洞孔的直角。这些组件都是用来安装标识的。（备注:不同的墙体材料，灯箱固定的方式也不同.）
The sandwich logo signs were screwed into the wall (using Tapcon® screws on the brick walls), and they took two to three hours to install (including wiring). During the installations, City Neon used its Manitex SkyCrane SC62 to lift everything under thirty feet. For the eighty-foot pylon sign, the shop used its eighty-five-foot Elliott truck along with a crane rented from sister company City Crane. One thing is for certain—this project definitely satiated City Neon’s craving for neon projects!
三明治标识是用螺旋钉固定在墙上的（用Tapcon®螺丝钉），共用了三个小时就安装好了。在安装过程中City Neon公司用他们的SkyCrane SC62小型起重机举起任何一个低于三十英尺的物体。而那个80英尺高的桥塔标识，City Neon公司不得不从City Crane公司租来85英尺高的吊车辅助运送。可以确定的是，这个项目完全满足了City Neon对霓虹灯标识工程的渴望。
