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Alright ,so I took some of yours advice and went to Walmart and purchased a couple "for sale" signs to cut apart and use for my conversions. I have a question though, there seems to be a sheen to them or a clear coat that is preventing the glue from bonding two pieces together, how would I go about removing this coating? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Just rub it down with a 1000 grit sand paper and you should be good

 Da_Mekanik wrote:
Alright ,so I took some of yours advice and went to Walmart and purchased a couple "for sale" signs to cut apart and use for my conversions. I have a question though, there seems to be a sheen to them or a clear coat that is preventing the glue from bonding two pieces together, how would I go about removing this coating? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Make sure its the right kind of plastic.

Are you using a solvent cement or superglue? My sign (also from Walmart - the larger 'for sale' sign, about .030" thick) was screen printed and plastic glues can't eat their way through all the layers on the printed side. CA glues still work, though, and I can either remove the printing or glue the blank back with plastic glue.

Regardless of what, exactly, is getting in the way, it's still styrene underneath - a bit of sanding to expose bare plastic should do the trick. I'd probably just lay the sheet down and sand the whole face in one go, since it'll be faster and more manageable than trying to clean off all the potentially fiddly pieces you may have cut out before you can glue them.

Using a MEK-based plastic solvent adhesive might be a good option as well. No guarantees, but something like Plastruct Plastic-Weld (orange bottle) eats through most printing. I've been using hardware store styrene signs with red printing for some projects and have had no problems with parts adhereing, but I don't know what the Walmart signs are printed with.

If that doesn't work then sandpaper will do the trick.