Sheets of "edge-lit" acrylic

[Steve Clarkson]

A sign shop guy showed me a piece of acrylic yesterday that he called "edge-lit", but was more of a translucent type.

The cool part was that it "glowed" along the edges. Does anyone know where you can get this type of acrylic? I have cut and engraved a few different translucent pieces of acrylic....red, green, grey......but the cut edges never "glowed".

Thanks!

[Scott Shepherd]

Steve, that's probably anything florescent. The orange is really nice. You can vector mark it and it looks like it's got an LED in it.

[Doug Griffith]

The thing about edge lit acrylic is it glows far more if it has a machined edge. Lasers more or less polish the edge so the effect works better if cut by CNC.

Cheers,
Doug

[Steve Clarkson]

Thanks guys, the piece I saw was orange.....hope the red cut with a laser looks just as good!

I wonder how it would look actually lit with LEDs?

[Mike Ireland]

If it's the acrylic I'm thinking of it is called Exotic Edge ACRYLITE

[Dan Hintz]

Steve (Scott) has it... anything fluorescent will show that effect.

[Steve Clarkson]

Are the Exotic Edge ACRYLITE and flourescent acrylics both cast (ie. can you see the engraving) or extruded?

[Joe Pelonio]

In addition to the flourescents, there's a clear with green edges that looks like safety glass, and the edges on it glow. Tap has it but most Acrylite dealers do too.

[Tor Amundson]

UV green and orange Acrylite, yes. I do a lot of work with it. I bought it straight from my local Tap Plastic store.

A sci-fi convention this past July requested 1800pcs of the green kind cut and etched into two badge types. Not only does it edge-glow like mad in daylight, but the engraved parts glow a little in sunlight too. Under UV they're crazy. Supposedly they were pretty amazing looking under the black-lights at their evening dances.

[Steve Clarkson]

VERY cool Tor! Thanks for sharing. Are those the only colors you have used? Are they Exotic Edge or flourescent?

[Ray Uebner]

Nice looking. I will have to try that sometime. Thanks for the post.

[Stephen Beckham]

I've used the Cryo Acrylic from laserbits it comes in blue (really faint), green and orange. It does okay, but nothing like what's in the pictures.

[Bob Davis]

I really like the fluro orange - it varies in colour from orange to bright pink depending on the light. I just wish that I could find more places to use it.

These items were rather eye-catching. The base is 6mm black followed by 3mm silver mirror and then 3mm fluro orange. The mirror increases the intensity quite a bit and increases the edge colour of the 8mm upright. Green is still good, but not as intense.

The pics don't do it justice. It's very difficult to photograph.

[Steven Wallace]

If you don't mind me asking do you use normal acrylic cement to attach the different layers?

[Bob Davis]

Hi Steven,
The upright has a "peg" in its base that protrudes through the 2 layers of 3mm (which have appropriate holes) and into but not quite through the matching hole in the 6mm black base.
Put the two 3mm pieces together with the upright going through them, add a small amount of acrylic cement to the remaining extension and then place the base in position. Place upright on a level surface and leave for a few minutes to dry.
If done correctly it will be quite strong and there are no visible glue marks.
The "peg" has to go through two layers of 3mm and one of 6mm = 12mm, but making it 11mm long makes for a cleaner job as excess glue won't smear the bottom and because acrylic varies so much in thickness.

Bob

[Steve Clarkson]

Those are really nice Bob......thanks for sharing!

[Steven Wallace]

Thank you very much for sharing you process.

[Brian Jones FL]

UV green and orange Acrylite, yes. I do a lot of work with it. I bought it straight from my local Tap Plastic store.

A sci-fi convention this past July requested 1800pcs of the green kind cut and etched into two badge types. Not only does it edge-glow like mad in daylight, but the engraved parts glow a little in sunlight too. Under UV they're crazy. Supposedly they were pretty amazing looking under the black-lights at their evening dances.

Out of curiosity where did you get the corded lanyards?

[AL Ursich]

Remember the 3/4 inch wide Lanyards avaliable for Sublimation can be printed in any color and text or image.... Condy has them.

AL