Hi, all- so I’m trying to make a sign like this for my office. Anyone have any advice on how to do it?
It will be a sheet of metal laminate (I would have to figure out how to cut it) on painted MDF or Acrylic, on a cloudy acrylic with a light pipe. I’m having trouble figuring out how to get the metal layer cut, and how to do good back lighting so if anyone has any tips please let me know!
Question of clarification.
Are the letters cut out and mounted up and off the background? so that the lighting is installed on the back side of the letter?
Use Diebond aluminum -faced plastic on the cncrouter
Yes, the second photo doesn’t show it but it’s like the first where there’s:
thin metal/mdf/lighting layer(acrylic with light strip inside). Not sure if that answers the question-
I know we have quite a few members that have done LED work on projects, and I know can point you in a good direction.
My own questions are because I’m trying to see if your vision lines up with what how I imagine this plays out, but also to give additional info for the folks with more expertise here.
I think this type of project is what I would like to learn LEDs for in my own work.
If you only want white with no color change, you just need neon flex leds. This’ll get you on/off and then a diffusing layer to cover (probably 2447 acrylic, silicon also works).
If you want color change and individual led control, you have a few options. More expensive and less soldering is side emitting led strips, less expensive is regular 2812b/2813/2815s cut and soldered up. Use 12V.
So, no color change or individual LED control, but the light will be red instead of white
this is great, thanks everyone for the help-
Do you think I could get the diffusing effect by using clear acrylic and just sanding or bead blasting the edges?
Yeah so get red “single color flexible led tape”. Flexible to save you soldering.
Sandblasting I haven’t tried yet if it gives a smooth diffusion effect- I was going to try after the lovely scraps you left but I heard it can work. Especially because its backlit you don’t need a super smooth effect, you can cheat a little and you just want the edges to glow and the wall will catch a lot of the light. Hand sanding isnt great, you’ll see the scratches on it.
General rule of thumb for smooth diffusion is the diffusion distance from the light to the diffuser should be greater than the distance between each light on the strip to avoid a dotted effect when doing led work. Doesn’t matter when its hidden though
One more comment in case its not apparent- the leds need to be inset in the shell to get the directed glow/halo effect. Can’t just tack strips to the back of the sign. DM me if you’d like.
The result is- pretty good. This piece is segmented where i only sandblasted the back, or the front, or both.
Especially if the side is not facing the client and you just want to smooth out the back its pretty nice. From the front its a bit hard to have a smooth texture/even sandblast. I’d still buy p95 surfaced acrylic. I’ll make a more refined piece and add it to my diffusion sample thing later but I think you can use the clear and sandblast it.
Cool! I’ll dm you to ask/tell you more about what I’m doing
