Beyond the Bot Ep. 5: Justin Lorenzo, L&M Architectural Signs, and Manufacturing Automation

Tony and Justin Lorenzo for Beyond the Bot Episode 5

In this episode of Beyond the Bot, Tony DeHart from Blue Sky Robotics sits down with Justin Lorenzo, President of L&M Architectural Signs, to explore how a multi-generational, family-run signage business is transforming with automation. Justin shares how his team embraced robotic painting technology not only to boost efficiency but to elevate quality—meeting the intense demands of modern manufacturing without compromising their craftsmanship. From early challenges to impressive returns on investment, the conversation explores what it really means to merge tradition with cutting-edge innovation.

Transcript:

Tony DeHart: Hello and welcome back to the Blue Sky Robotics lab. I'm Tony DeHart, and on today’s episode of Beyond the Bot, we're excited to bring you a conversation with Justin Lorenzo from L&M Signs. Justin is an innovator in manufacturing and the signage industry more generally, and we're excited to catch up with him about how he's using automation to benefit his business.

Justin, thank you so much for joining us. I’m super excited to catch up with you and hear a little bit more about your story and the results that you’ve seen. Can you kick us off by telling us just a little bit about who you are, what your company is, and what it does?

Justin Lorenzo: Sure! I’m Justin Lorenzo, nice to meet everybody. I’m the President of L&M Architectural Signs. We’re a full-service signage and environmental graphics company. I’ve pretty much grown up in the industry—my dad and granddad started this in 1982. My mom and dad worked it for years, and now my brother and I run it. It’s kind of the way you grow up in the Lorenzo household—in the sign industry. So it's been a lifelong pursuit.

What do we do? Oh boy, lots of different things—dimensional logos and letters, environmental graphics like wall coverings and glass films, custom projects like millwork and metal fabrication. There’s not much we don’t do. We manufacture about 95% in-house and manage everything internally.

Tony: So you really are that classic American small business, family-owned and going back generations. That’s incredible. How did you make the decision—or what motivated you—to look towards automation?

Justin: At large, we've always been updating as fast as we can. As soon as water jet became viable, we moved from manual cutting on band saws to water jets. CNC routers came even sooner. We try to stay ahead of the technology curve.

With robotics specifically, we were looking for an opportunity to get our feet wet. Same with additive manufacturing, AI—all these new technologies. If you don’t stay ahead, you become irrelevant quickly. The opportunity came up to jump into robotics, and we contacted you guys. I guess we can talk more about the specific use case—the painting robot.

Tony: Yeah, I’d love to hear how you targeted painting as one of your first robotic

projects.

Justin: We had a very specific large project—can’t talk about the client—but consistency of the paint finish was hyper-critical. We’ve been painting and finishing for decades, and we knew this application needed a higher tier, a different standard.

It was a matte black paint. It needed consistent color, Sheen, and mill thickness—not just part-to-part, but batch-to-batch and over time. We tried with human application and couldn’t hit the consistency. Robotics seemed like our best shot.

Tony: So in contrast to people looking at automation as a labor-savings tool, you were really looking at it for quality and consistency.

Justin: Correct, absolutely.

Tony: You came to us with the challenge—getting a consistent finish. What happened next from your perspective?

Justin: We knew robotic painting systems exist, but most are geared towards scale—like automotive or industrial painting. Those systems cost upwards of $250–$300k and are less flexible.

We needed something small-footprint, easy to run, easy to start and stop. We figured a custom solution was the way to go. We found you guys, and you said, “Sure, we’ve done similar things. We can help.”

Tony: Not just custom but flexible, right? Because you’re a project-based shop. One day it's squares, the next it's circles.

Justin: Exactly. You might be doing squares all day today, but tomorrow it's circles or triangles. It changes constantly.

Tony: What kind of results have you seen since putting this system to work?

Justin: The consistency far exceeded our expectations. Batch after batch, week after week—it’s flawless. You can’t tell the difference between what was sprayed today and what was sprayed a month ago. Matte black is the gold standard—very unforgiving. And the robot nails it.

Tony: How have you integrated it with your current painters?

Justin: Right now, we’re still only using it for that one big project. But we're planning to use it for our product line too—these frames painted white or black.

Currently, our operator manually primes the parts, loads multiple trays into the robot, hits the Go button, and walks away. During the cycle time, he’s doing other tasks—priming, mixing paint, organizing. It’s an augment, not a replacement. He’s more efficient overall—even though the robot isn’t faster than an experienced painter, the combined output is higher.

Tony: So not man vs. machine—it’s man plus machine.

Justin: Exactly. It helps the person. It doesn’t replace them.

Tony: Any unexpected benefits?

Justin: Definitely—paint usage was a huge surprise. We're saving anywhere from 50% to 70% on paint, which we did not anticipate at all. When we first watched the robot spray, we actually assumed it was using more paint because the spray fan stays on longer. But once we ran the numbers, it turned out the robot is able to lay down such a precise and consistent pattern that we’re pushing way less volume through the gun. The overlap is perfect every time, which means we don’t have to overcompensate like you sometimes do with a manual sprayer.

And that really adds up—some of the paint we’re using on this job is over $120 a gallon, even after reducers. In phase one of the project alone, we estimated we’d need about 40 gallons. But because of the robot's efficiency, we only used about 20. That’s a direct savings of around $2,400 just on materials for that one phase. When you factor in multiple batches over the course of the year, those numbers really compound. It’s not just a minor improvement—it’s a fundamental shift in how we think about material usage and waste.

Tony: So how did that impact your ROI period?

Justin: Honestly, the project wouldn’t have been feasible without the robot to begin with—that was our return on investment right out of the gate. But even beyond that, if you’re looking strictly at dollars and cents—between the increase in quality, the efficiency gains, and the reduction in paint usage—we’re on track to fully recover the system cost within this calendar year. That’s way faster than we initially projected. The robot has already paid for itself in terms of value delivered.

Tony: Incredible. And you took a risk on us—what was that experience like?

Justin: Hindsight being 20/20, it was absolutely the right call. You guys really pulled it off. After our first Google Meet, I could tell you were a motivated team. I did some digging, looked through the resumes—you had the technical background, and I knew that we had enough in-house capability to collaborate if there were gaps. But that wasn’t even necessary. You handled the whole thing end to end. From a risk-reward standpoint, it’s one of the best bets we’ve made. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Tony: And uptime? Has the system stayed online and productive?

Justin: No issues at all. The only time we ran into anything was when we had to unplug the system to move some things around in the shop. There was a brief hiccup during the reboot, but your team jumped on a call with ours and logged in remotely. We were back up the same day. Other than that, it’s been smooth sailing—zero downtime, and you’ve been totally supportive throughout.

Tony: You're clearly at the cutting edge. How do you see automation impacting your industry and small/mid-sized manufacturing in the next 5–10 years?

Justin: If you’re not doing it now, you’ll become irrelevant. It’s not just about using ChatGPT in the office. It’s additive manufacturing, robotics in the shop. We might add robotic welding, conveyors, minor assembly—maybe another robot in five years. Ten years? Who knows. Fully integrated systems, AI vision, additive manufacturing.

I see industries converging—good builders building lots of different things, not just signage.

Tony: Yeah, and what we’re seeing as materials and labor are getting more expensive is that being able to create this synergy between people and machines really creates a key competitive advantage. Has that been your experience?

Justin: Always.

Tony: And how has the operator experience been?

Justin: No issues whatsoever. He’s happy with it. He was a little bit intimidated by it— there were jokes running around the shop of “oh you’re gonna get replaced by a robot.” They named it after him! He loves it now.

Tony: Super glad to hear that, Justin. Well with this question of automation more generally in your industry, what are the stakes? What does this mean to you as a family-run business in terms of being able to stay competitive?

Justin: Well we touched on this a little before, too, but if you’re not exploring this now, you’re going to become irrelevant, and pretty quick. You need to be thinking automation, you need to be thinking robotics, you need to be thinking AI technology in every part of what you do. If you’re not doing it you won’t exist in 10–15 years.

Tony: That’s certainly a wakeup call. As we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to share?

Justin: Just looking forward to talking more. We’ve got other projects we want to explore. Let’s see what’s possible.

Tony: Justin, thanks so much for joining us. Always a pleasure, and we look forward to watching you grow and be successful and having that be a collaborative effort. Looking forward to the future!

Justin: Yes, sir. Absolutely.