Newsletter June 2005

In this issue:

New Products
Shop News
Coming Soon
Feature article – Caring for Acrylic

New Products

Clear bags from Impact images for matted prints. According to our customers they are the best and that is why we added them.

Acrylic cleaning products– Brillianize cleaner & polish and Craftics smooth microfiber cloth. These two products making working with acrylic a breeze.

Silver metal frames

Ebony mats

Shop News

Frame Destination has been growing steadily. We have moved into a new building located at 13715 Floyd Circle in Dallas and have hired two people, James and Abraham.

Coming Soon

Non glare acrylic– in stock but not on the website

Lineco mounting corners and tapes– in stock but not on the website

4-ply black mat with black core– in stock but not on the website

We are in the process of adding additional wood frame colors.

Feature article - Caring for Acrylic

If you are like me you have love/hate relationship with acrylic. On one hand, it is much safer and easier to work with than glass because it is lighter and nearly unbreakable. On the other hand, you can't clean it like glass and it often has a static charge that attracts dust. Fortunately, there are ways around these issues.

Let us start by mentioning what you should not do. Do not use cleaners with abrasives, alcohol or ammonia. They will scratch and dull the surface. Do not use paper towels. Paper towels are a pulp based product and are equivalent to taking a bunch of twigs, grounding them up and then smearing them across the surface. Do not use: window-cleaning sprays, scouring compounds, acetone, gasoline, benzene, carbon tetrachloride or lacquer thinner.

That is a long list of “don'ts”, so you are probably wondering what you can use. Cyro, the manufacturer of the acrylic we use, says “soft lint free cloth or chamois, mild soap, warm water. If you are like me, you would rather be told more specifically what you can use instead of wasting time trying to figure out what products might cause harm. I decided to do some serious research and put this question behind us once and for all.

I found several companies that specialize in plastic cleaning products, looked at plastic manufacturers recommendations, did other research, narrowed down the list, and then brought in samples of the finalists products. I tested both cleaning solutions and cloths. A really great benefit of the cleaners that we tested was that they practically eliminate the static charge.

After testing the cleaners with acrylic dust, static charge, grease and dirt, my conclusion was that Brillianize (www.brilliznize.com) is the best. The runner up product was Craftics (www.craftics.com) 20/20 cleaner and 20/20 polish. The 20/20 cleaner was a little quicker at removing basic smudges than Brillianize. Brillianze left the surface with more of a polish but more importantly, objects behind the acrylic seem just a little sharper. If you use 20/20 polish it will add more polish but this is a two-step process and the Brillianize coated acrylic is still sharper. Of course, the really nice thing in either case is the lack of static charge.

I also tested cleaning cloths. Briallianze also makes “softkloth” which was included in the test along with some others. My testing concluded that the Craftics “Microfiber Smooth Towel” was the best and the Craftics “Microfiber Terry Cloth” was a close 2nd. The terry cloth was similar to other more common microfiber cloths (such as the 3M high performance cleaning cloth) and it was good at pulling dust. The smooth towel was more like a combination of microfiber technology and chamois. Although the terry was a little easier at just removing simple dust the smooth towel was best at getting rid of that last streak and getting the most ultimate clean.

I was thrilled with the combination of Brillianize and the Craftics smooth towel and decided to add both to the Frame Destination product line.

--end

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Mark Rogers
President
Frame Destination, Inc.