I’d go laser for acrylic. You’ll wish you did if you don’t.

Yea its doable, basically youll use an oflute plastics bit and carpet tape to hold small stuff in place. Lasers are typically what is used for the lettering. You may also use it to engrave the alupanel(brand name, aluminum composit panel) a typical application of this is the fire map outside an elevator.

Cncs can do small letters as well. Having both gives flexibility but you can get by with 1 or the other. Id did most of my signmaking on a 5x12’ panel router so i jad the flexibility to make big signs or small ones. For cnc software its gard to beat v-carve for cnc machines. Rhino cam is great too but may be expensive for your needs.

Acrylic on a CNC is a messy nightmare and will take 10X the time to setup. Not to mention that you can’t cut any 90º inside angles with a cylindrical milling cutter. For this specific task, laser is the best option.

Installed a machine at THE company that makes all the standardized signage for hotels and whatnot. They are doing this with single flute endmills with 80k rpm spindles. For acrylic, they are using MCD tipped endmills that are like $400 a pop.

Have used both in shop settings for ada signs, only go cnc if you have to. Base price of equipment is more, time spent cleaning the rowmark (raised letters) is significantly more. Unless you mainly want to do acm for the body of the sign, just go laser and do it all in acrylic.

Laser cutter would be better. It’s a lot faster since you can just lay the acrylic in. No need to deburr pieces, clamp/glue them or need for a vacuum bed.

If you are specifically doing only cnc cuttable materials then I would recommend at least a 4’x4’ bed. You want to fit sheets and cut multiple signs. Doing them one at a time will not be profitable on a cnc machine. However still leaves you with the inability of doing braille quickly.

Also for signs you would want to get a UV flatbed printer. Being able to quickly print full color onto wood, many plastics or metal gives you a lot of flexibility. It also allows you to print raised letters or braille. Downside is the cleaning and maintenance. You could get away with buying blanke and only a flatbed printer. A lot of sign shops do this.

Have you looked into how long it takes to design signs and how much local businesses will pay? The amount of back and forth on designs and time it takes to make custom signs means you will be working on pretty small margins. A good target would be spending less than 10 minutes to produce and package the sign if it’s that small. Most of the labour is communication and understanding what someone is looking for.

Does the lettering need to be raised? Could it be cut into instead?

There are various multi layer acrylics and acrylic/metal composite sheets that allow you to cut though the surface layer/color/material to expose the inner layer/color/material. This with vcarve can look really nice.

A CO2 will be a much smaller investment for a machine of similar quality to a CNC. They’re an order of magnitude simpler. They’re also sold used all the time for very low prices if you look around a bit.

I used to work at a place that did acrylics work.

A laser will give you edges that need little to no finishing but will need to be de-stressed in order to be glued with solvent.

CNC’d edges can be glued straight away, but need to be gassed/melted for a clear finish.