A Bright Idea - Acrylic

I didn’t even realize such a thing existed! :no_mouth: I was thinking of the design in terms of the little bulby ones.

I’m about to go buy a bunch of the flat kind - that would be worlds easier to use.

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I get mine from aliexpress. There are lots of different types as in brightness, color and voltage requirements. So start now to figure what will work best. I’ve posted stuff in the past…can’t remember where…lol

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I’ll go look. (Yah! Gotta lotta learning ahead…again!)

For really flat stuff, el-wire might be just the ticket. I haven’t tried any for edge lighting acrylic but now I’m gonna have to see what I have around the garage. It’s the size of a lead in a pencil and is basically a long tubular lightbulb (with extremely tiny diameter) so it lights evenly the whole length of the wire.

Downside is that it runs on AC so you need an inverter (about the size of two 9V batteries) to convert the typical DC battery pack power to AC. There are some neat inverters that also are sound activated so the light pulses to sound (or music).

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Experiments must be posted for those of us not quite so electrically inclined! :smiley:

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I have to dig around for some el-wire. I did a whole technicolor coat out of it (100’ of wire, 6 controllers) :smile: Pretty sure I had some leftovers.

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I feel elwire doesnt give enough light. I have some so I can try it out tomorrow.

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Yeah, that’s my thought - although I used the new high output wire (you can only drive 1/2 the wire length from the same power supply). But if it wraps the acrylic piece maybe okay? I think I’ve got some high output here just have to find where my wife put it (she says she’s cleaning up after me, I think she’s hiding my stuff :slight_smile:).

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Used your concept @Jules and did something for my son…this is his gamer tag…and favorite Pokemon. USB powered so it will sit near his computer most likely.

Three layers of acrylic. Clear sandwiched in between two transluscent blues.

LED base. Bottom layer 1/4" opaque blue, 1/8" opaque blue with slot for LED strip, 1/8" fluro blue, then top layer 1/4" opaque blue.

In the light without LEDs on

In the light with LEDs on

In the dark with LEDs on.

Observations.

  1. Since the frame is transluscent, it shows where the glue bonded to the layers…so must remedy that either with an opaque frame or some other way of bonding the layers.
  2. My office needs a good dusting since there’s alot of dust on my clear…lmao

Other than that…I’m pretty happy…:grinning:

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SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! :heart_eyes:

(I think I just became one of the rabid “can’t wait to get one of these things in my hands” people!)

That looks SO much better than I thought it would! Thank you for testing it!

:smile: :smile: :smile:

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Okay, now that I’ve finally stopped hyperventilating, I can see from @smcgathyfay 's example that the engraving is going to need one more slight modification if I want to use the transparent colored acrylic, otherwise it’s going to display incorrectly.

So one more time back to the drawing board.

I’ll upload the final revisions tomorrow. :slight_smile:

Okay…done! (Didn’t take as long as I thought.)

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From that picture anyway the glue looks pretty cool. Kind of like electricity going through it. If anything I would want more :smiley:

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Good point… maybe I’ll put some more so it looks like it’s intended! Great idea from a bad situation…lol

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That is absolutely beautiful. These are some of the things that I want to do, although I had not thought of using two colors of acrylic and cutting a shape too. Outstanding work. I can’t get enough of your work. Thank you.:grin:

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Just curious, what type of glue did you use?

You can use acetone to stick acrylic things to other acrylic things. At least with acrylic nails. It sort of melts them together. Or something. The acrylic comes as a powder and the acetone does magical, smelly things to it. I wonder if this would work with acrylic sheets? And be uniform enough to adhere the acrylic sheets together without showing spots where it didn’t quite stick.

When I need to glue translucent papers together without seeing glue, I use a really awesome paper cement. It’s sort of the texture of honey, so it doesn’t soak through or saturate the paper, and because it evenly coats the entire layer, you don’t see anything noticeable in the finished product. I wonder if maybe there might be a product that would perform similarly for acrylic?

Last thought, maybe the layers don’t need to be glued on the face/surfaces. Maybe you could sandwich them together and coat the edges? Like they do with watercolor blocks. And the tops of notepads. I think it’s some sort of PVA glue, and it’s thick and rubbery and not invisible at all. Plus, considering all those things are designed to only hold well-enough and be tear-out-able, thats probably not a great solution.

Ok, full disclosure, I have a glue/adhesive obsession.

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Be careful about the company you share that with. :slight_smile:

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I use acrylic cement
https://www.amazon.com/Weld-Acrylic-Adhesive-Applicator-Bottle/dp/B0096TWKCW

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Ditto. Acetone isn’t as quick, clean or wicking.

But it’s not as toxic either so there are trade offs.

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When I was first putting together my tileplates, I had asked what works best for bonding acrylic to acrylic. I confirm that weld-on (now under name sci-grip) is THE best for dealing with small pieces being put together. I tried a few otgers, even straight acetone, and weld-on means holding pieces together for about 20 aeconds, setting it down, and moving on. And as long as the window is cracked or you make sure to drink water, no headaches or hangover feel (thumbs up)

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Looks like I bought Weld-On 3. Is there a major difference between 3 and 4 in usage or results?