Acrylic Centerpiece Sample

[pete hagan]

Here are a couple of photos shot at home (sorry poor quality) of the centerpiece we built for a recent large gala dinner. The pictures don't do it justice because I don't have any of the florals or greenery with the item but it gives you an idea. We made 90 centerpieces from scratch complete with LED edge lit acrylic with the new hospital design in the acrylic. It really looked great with the florals.

Pete

[Craig Hogarth]

way cool. How'd you make the base?

[Mike Null]

Pete

Beautiful work and a clever idea.

Would you mind sharing the "how to" with the edge lit acrylic.

[Marc Myer]

On the edge-lit acrylic, is it more effective to go back and sand the edges in order to catch more light? What's the best approach?

[pete hagan]

:)
The bases are MDF cut on a friend's little CNC router table running Mach3. I didn't want to run it in my CNC as it primarily is for metal and frankly I didn't want to clean up the mess. Painted with Rustoleum hammered finish (quart cans in auto sprayer).

We tried the polished edge and the sanded edge for the LED and found the best brightness was with a flame polished edge but the best distribution (with 60% reduction in brightness) was a sanded edge. Instead we found 120 degree LEDs at a ham radio convention in bulk for very cheap around 0.38 each which made the difference. This worked well and except for the tremendous amount of soldering involved. The client loved it and I've already sold it to another event even bigger so I guess I need to make more bases.

Thanks for the comments

Pete