Backlit business sign. Laser cut cast acrylic

Finished Creations
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A laser cut cast acrylic backlit business sign I made for a small welding shop.

The sign is backlit using 104 WS2812 addressable LED’s housed in a 3D printed PLA enclosure and are controlled by an Arduino Pro Mini processor. The white panel the light shines through was also 3D printed.

The acrylic was cut using a 40 watt diode laser. The text and border were made by laser cutting the protective film on the acrylic with a 10 watt diode laser, weeding out the letters then masking and painting with automotive paint. (Better adhesion to the acrylic.)

metal

Sorry about the image size. I had to convert a video to an animated GIF to keep the file size small.

Just thought I share this for anyone interested.

P.S. Sorry about the deleted posts I made. Still trying to figure out this forum. :thinking:

Dave

18 Likes
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Nice blend of electronics and laser art. Nice job!

3 Likes
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You are limited to a few types of files and also 4mB file size.

Post the video on any common platform, such as google drive, then post the link here. Make sure you grant access to anyone with the link.

If we use a pdf file, you can append the .txt file.

Appending .txt, retains the original file type xyz.pdf → xyz.pdf.txt

You can post file types normally rejected, such as pdf, by appending a .txt to the filename.

:smile_cat:

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Authorized file types:

image
image1054×106 2.43 KB

5

How big is this, that’s good looking work!

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Thank you Chris and Mike for the kind feedback.

The sign is 14 inches wide and 11 inches tall. I was limited by the size of the acrylic sheets I had available.

I made my own laser frame to handle material 24 inches by 36 inches but I’m having a hard time sourcing that size in black cast acrylic. Also, the electronics enclosure was 3D printed and the bed surface is only 255mm x 255mm which became a limiting factor as well.

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Johnson Plastic Plus has it available in 24x24 or 24x48

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I guess I should have mentioned that I live in Ontario Canada.

The shipping fee from Johnson Plastic Plus would make the product too costly to make something from to sell. And thus the reason I’m having a tough time finding it.

There are sellers in the Toronto area but again the shipping cost just destroys any margin of profit one could make. And I’m not willing to drive 1.5 hours one way to pick it up.

But I appreciate your reply.

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I understand completely. I thought you weren’t able to locate it at all.

Your sign is very cool, by the way.

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It’s OK Tim. Thanks anyway for trying to help.

It’s always appreciated.

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Uploaded a video to YouTube.

5 Likes
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Did you have to write the code onto the Arduino or did it have a mode that worked?

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I wrote the code from scratch and uploaded it to the processor.