Whether installed in shop windows or on top of NASA mission control center consoles, acrylic resin for edge lighting is a popular choice for making high visibility signs. Partly because of their amazing hologram like appearance, but also because they are very cheap and easy to produce. How cheap and easy is it? Take a look at the recent video of [hack modular], which is a perfect example.
Now you may think you need something like a CNC router to make such a logo. For more complex images, it can be said that. However, if you only care about the text and have a fairly stable hand, you can complete the etching step by printing the template and razor blade. Of course, the LCD style font selected by [hack modular] for this logo is particularly suitable for manual cutting – if you are interested in edge light calligraphy, this method may not be what you want.
This linear LED provides more stable light.
After engraving words on acrylic resin, the only missing ingredient is light. For this purpose, [hack modular] uses 12 volt linear LED strip lights. In other words, instead of dotted with a single led like a traditional strip, it provides a continuous light band, which is very suitable for this application. It was glued to a piece of discarded wood, and a rusty corner bracket from an old mccarno suit was used to fix acrylic resin to the centerline. If you think the final product looks like it’s created from garbage, don’t be sad. That’s the end.
The end result looks great. In fact, if we are honest, it is much better than using hand tools we think. Of course, the choice of font has a lot to do with this, but then again, we won’t mind if all our edge illuminated acrylic signs eventually look like large seven segment displays.