Why I built Tray Master
I’ve worked in the sign industry since the early 2000s, designing and making signs, including aluminium composite trays made by hand and on a CNC machine.
Tray Master began with a practical problem: there wasn’t enough time in the day. In a small sign shop, you have to cover several roles. Drawing trays, working out panel splits and joins, allowing space for jointing strips and planning materials all took time away from other work.
I wanted a quicker, simpler way to handle that process. With help from AI, I began building my own application. The first version had one job: create the DXF drawings for trays.
Once that worked, I saw how much more useful it could become. Tray Master grew to include artwork imports, photo mock ups and more of the planning involved in a sign job.
Why I’m asking signmakers to test it
Tray Master has grown beyond what I can fully test on my own. I know there will be bugs, and I want other signmakers to help find them and suggest improvements.
I also want to understand how the app fits different ways of working. A process or label that makes sense to me may be confusing to someone else. Feedback on those everyday details matters as much as finding something that doesn’t work.
The purpose of the beta is to learn from that experience and make Tray Master clearer, more reliable and more useful in a working sign shop.
My aim is simple: to build something useful for everyday signmakers.