Really awesome

[Bert Kemp]

There's been many discussions and a couple of pictures of LED base acrylic stuff, but I never have seen it in person. So I had a piece of 1/4 clear acrylic and decide to see if I could make a base and then engrave the acrylic . Well now seeing what it looks like in person I'm blown away. 3 I did today with the scrap acrylic I had. Now guess what I got to buy more acrylic :rolleyes:349727349728349729that one I did a while back wasn't in a base I just wrapped some led lights around it to get a idea. Putting them in a base makes a real big difference.

[Brian Book]

Hi Bert they do look Awesome ! .... I'm hoping to get into the edge lit LED Signs when my machine gets here :)

Brian

[Kev Williams]

Pics below are a reminder of my old days (note the date on the curtain wall, center left) :)
--we were edge-lighting plex back then too! --Barely!

This 'building' is one of several that BTS built for their '91 NAB trade show. I cut out all those letters on those headers with my first 5000XT, even had to hand-digitize the font they wanted (Avantguard).

During the build, Jerry, their construction artist, had a florescent light that was on, sitting on a table next to a piece of plex, and he noticed all the scratches on the surface of the plex lit up. He asked me if engraved lettering would light up too! :D

They originally planned on having banners made for those signs. The 1/4" plex panels were 12 x 30" if memory serves. I simply engraved them from the back, and drilled 2 small holes along the top edge. Jerry cut a slot in the soffit that the plex would fit into, a couple of nails thru the holes held it up. He just built a few boxes to fit 3" florescent tubes into, and put them above the edge of the plex. The signs lit up like gangbusters and appeared to just float in mid-air. These days it's not a big deal, but back then those panels were the hit of the show!
349738349739
--This nightmare job is what led me to spend $10g on Casmate... best ton o' money I ever spent! ;

[David Somers]

Hey Bert!

It is pretty cool isn't it?

One of the nicer LED's to work with are the LED Strips. Rubberized strips with a 3M adhesive backing to and fairly tightly packed LED's on it. They are thing and flexible. And you can cut them at set points along the length if needed. You can get them battery operated or with a little transformer for AC operation. You can get them in cold white, warm white, and RGB, with a remote to permit you to change the colors. So if you were doing something as a base for demostration, or as a test, or for some use of your own you can use the color changing ones and just swap out the acrylic pieces, changing the color of each strip to match the new design you just dropped in. Pretty versatile.

One piece of advice. Make the joints in your base snug so you dont get light leaks through that. It looks poorly made even if you make it strong and durable.

Have fun!!!

Dave

[Jacob Pruitt]

Do you mind explaining the base a little more? They look really great and I can imagine that using the lights that automatically cycle through their colors would be neat as well. Getting into crunch time and I want to make my own Christmas gifts instead of cool stuff for other people.... Isn't that part of a laser? Getting to do cool stuff for yourself and friends 🇩🇰

[Bert Kemp]

I just cut the base out with the laser, not the best way to do it but it works. Basically a couple of rectangles cut out of wood with a slot cut out for the leds to shine thru. got some short leds off ebay and a power supply to power the leds.Still working on the design this was my first one someone put up a file for a base a while back do a search maybe you can find it. I didn't use that one but there all very similar




Do you mind explaining the base a little more? They look really great and I can imagine that using the lights that automatically cycle through their colors would be neat as well. Getting into crunch time and I want to make my own Christmas gifts instead of cool stuff for other people.... Isn't that part of a laser? Getting to do cool stuff for yourself and friends 

[Bert Kemp]

Hey Bert!

It is pretty cool isn't it?

One of the nicer LED's to work with are the LED Strips. Rubberized strips with a 3M adhesive backing to and fairly tightly packed LED's on it. They are thing and flexible. And you can cut them at set points along the length if needed. You can get them battery operated or with a little transformer for AC operation. You can get them in cold white, warm white, and RGB, with a remote to permit you to change the colors. So if you were doing something as a base for demostration, or as a test, or for some use of your own you can use the color changing ones and just swap out the acrylic pieces, changing the color of each strip to match the new design you just dropped in. Pretty versatile.

One piece of advice. Make the joints in your base snug so you dont get light leaks through that. It looks poorly made even if you make it strong and durable.

Have fun!!!

Dave
There are no joints in the base its basically a solid block of wood.

[Glen Monaghan]

In addition to fitting the slot and acrylic so that there aren't light leaks, the effect looks better if you avoid hot spots near the source and corresponding dark areas opposite the source. What's happening is that the engraving near the source scatters most of the light, looking very bright. Since that scattering leaves comparatively little light that makes it all the way to the far side (in your examples, the top) of the acrylic, the engraving there is noticeably darker than the lower engraving. Best way I've found to fix this is to use a gradient fill across the engraving so that the areas closest to the lights are engraved most shallow and areas furthest from the lights are engraved deepest. That way, the light scattered looks more even across the entire face. There can also be issues with more and less densely engraved areas, as well as shapes that don't allow lighting across the entire face (such as your circles, where the sides of the circle aren't lit the same as the middle), but that's another horse...

[Bert Kemp]

I should have mentioned that the photos show the white near the bottom close to the base in in real life the engraving is pretty even colored top to bottom.



In addition to fitting the slot and acrylic so that there aren't light leaks, the effect looks better if you avoid hot spots near the source and corresponding dark areas opposite the source. What's happening is that the engraving near the source scatters most of the light, looking very bright. Since that scattering leaves comparatively little light that makes it all the way to the far side (in your examples, the top) of the acrylic, the engraving there is noticeably darker than the lower engraving. Best way I've found to fix this is to use a gradient fill across the engraving so that the areas closest to the lights are engraved most shallow and areas furthest from the lights are engraved deepest. That way, the light scattered looks more even across the entire face. There can also be issues with more and less densely engraved areas, as well as shapes that don't allow lighting across the entire face (such as your circles, where the sides of the circle aren't lit the same as the middle), but that's another horse...

[Kev Williams]

A few years ago at a casino there was an edge lit plex sign by the cashier's window, wasn't very big, and the plex came from a mold, had trees, the sun, some water, and they lit the trees green, the sun orange, blue water- I've always wanted to make up something like that...

Right after I got my first laser, I found an engraving program online that made a "3D" image of some snow covered mountains with trees, text, etc which was done on 5 separate pieces of plex, which you stacked together front to back. It really looked cool, and would've been real cool to edge light-

Wish I had more time to play-- only LED lights I get to play with are the ones Gary put in the GCC, and those in my flashlights ;)

[Glen Monaghan]

The brightness gradient does tend to be accentuated in photographs, but it's still noticeable to the naked eye, especially over larger areas and with dense engravings, less so for smaller pieces and with little engraving. The first image attached is a stack of 8 cake plates I did, each about 13" diameter and 6" tall, with densely-engraved filigree design and the newlyweds' names engraved on all four sides. The leds are underneath the plate, shining down through the stand, and this picture does show a slight brightness change from top to bottom of each plate, but no hot/dark spots.

Instead of a single wedding cake, there was one cake per table, each with a different combination of flavors for cake and frosting, with guests encouraged to visit other tables to sample each combination. I made a cake topper for each from mirrored acrylic with table number and cake/frosting flavor reverse engraved and color filled, with two identical mirrored pieces glued back-to-back to be readable from either side. Wish I had been able to photograph them because none of the pictures I got were very clear, but you can see in the second picture that the lighting was actually very uniform across the stand, thanks to the gradient engraving...

[Bert Kemp]

I'm not sure what your saying here? Do you mean to engrave the entire piece but very light on the back ground? and deeper on the emblem?349772


In addition to fitting the slot and acrylic so that there aren't light leaks, the effect looks better if you avoid hot spots near the source and corresponding dark areas opposite the source. What's happening is that the engraving near the source scatters most of the light, looking very bright. Since that scattering leaves comparatively little light that makes it all the way to the far side (in your examples, the top) of the acrylic, the engraving there is noticeably darker than the lower engraving. Best way I've found to fix this is to use a gradient fill across the engraving so that the areas closest to the lights are engraved most shallow and areas furthest from the lights are engraved deepest. That way, the light scattered looks more even across the entire face. There can also be issues with more and less densely engraved areas, as well as shapes that don't allow lighting across the entire face (such as your circles, where the sides of the circle aren't lit the same as the middle), but that's another horse...

[Glen Monaghan]

You only engrave the design you want to light up, no background, pretty much as you have already done. However, you used constant power from left to right and top to bottom for that, so every engraved spot is the same depth (this causes the design to be brighter closer to the light and dimmer farther away from the light). What I'm saying is that you want the depth of engraving to be proportional to the distance of the engraved point from the light source: most shallow when closest and most deep when furthest from the source (this evens out the brightness across the design). See if the attached picture helps explain it.

[David Somers]

Hey Bert!

See if this helps. This is a link to a Facebook Group site's file list.
Look for LED Signmakers Guide.PDF
https://www.facebook.com/groups/PNWCNC/files/

Or failing that, let me know and I will email you the PDF. I dont think I can upload a PDF to a Forum Post directly though.

[Keith Downing]

Hey Bert!

See if this helps. This is a link to a Facebook Group site's file list.
Look for LED Signmakers Guide.PDF
https://www.facebook.com/groups/PNWCNC/files/

Or failing that, let me know and I will email you the PDF. I dont think I can upload a PDF to a Forum Post directly though.

Hey David, that is a closed group. Meaning you can't see any posts or links without being approved. And it doesn't seem like they want members who aren't actually able to attend the meetings in the PNW.

Would you mind posting or emailing me the pdf as well? I'd like to see what has been put together.

[Bert Kemp]

I don't do facebook


Hey Bert!

See if this helps. This is a link to a Facebook Group site's file list.
Look for LED Signmakers Guide.PDF
https://www.facebook.com/groups/PNWCNC/files/

Or failing that, let me know and I will email you the PDF. I dont think I can upload a PDF to a Forum Post directly though.

[John Lifer]

There's a few more out there with base designs. I think Obrary site has some, (lot of living hinges on the site you can look at also and make)

[Dennis Watson]

Am I missing something here because I dont see any pics of a base.

[Bert Kemp]

Didn't find much on Obrary no led bases only 1 sign.


There's a few more out there with base designs. I think Obrary site has some, (lot of living hinges on the site you can look at also and make)

[Bert Kemp]

If you do a search here there are several threads on led base's that we've done in the past.All you need to do is cut a rectangle with a slot for the leds to shine thru. put a strip of lights under it and an engraved piece of acrylic in the slot. Thats basically it. I still have not finished my final design for the base.


Am I missing something here because I dont see any pics of a base.

[Keith Outten]

Hey Bert!

I dont think I can upload a PDF to a Forum Post directly though.

David, you can upload a PDF here.

[David Somers]

Thanks Keith!

I see the problem now. I was beyond the size limit for a PDF. And also needed to select the Advanced option before I saw the option to upload files other than photos and videos. No worries though.

If folks want a copy of that Emailed to them please pop me a PM with your Email and I will send it off to you. You can also email me direct at d underscore s o m e r s @ that email address with hot and mail as its name .com.

Bert....I will email it directly to you.

Thanks again Keith!!

Dave

[John Noell]

RDWorks seems to have a special tool LGP (for "light guide plate") for doing this gradient sort of thing. I have not used it as I am no longer making those kids of signs. :)