Monitor screen acrylic with LED lighting

Beyond the Manual
1

These are my first two attempts at lighting acrylic shapes. The bases are store bought dimmable LED battery lights. The acrylic sheets are from monitor screens from computers. They come in all sorts of sizes and thicknesses depending on the manufacturer, but they are all designed to shape, diffuse, direct, or polarize light before it gets to your eyes. To get at this fun material you just need some tiny screw drivers and scrap laptops, computers, or flat screen TVs. I have been playing around with this idea for a long time and finally figured out how to do it. I found a glue that is activated by UV light which works nicely for attaching the acrylic pieces because it is clear. The acrylic can be heated slightly and then bent and shaped which is how I got the 3D effect of the leaves and butterfly.

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31 Likes
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Fascinating technique and stunning results! :grinning:

3 Likes
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Thinking outside the box. Nice!

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Are you sure they’re acrylic?

If you’re not sure… there is such a thing as light-guiding acrylic, so maybe there are other optically-specific acrylics, but I would use caution and probably try to get a 100% answer before cutting more of them.

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Hmm interesting, here’s one page about how they are made:

Privacy filters vary by manufacturer but are made of several layers of PET plastic materials.

These look like they are the really thin kind – I would imagine that the harder ones are made of a clear plastic with this adhered to it. Maybe acrylic, maybe not, it’d be hard to say without hearing from the manufacturer.

6

Looks really neat!

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Nice! Can you post a link to the LED battery lights you use?
K

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What a lovely layered piece!

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Nice designs–like how you’ve added a lot of dimension to them.

But as noted, be sure the material is not only safe for the GF, but for you to breath!

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Thanks! I bought them at Home Depot. Had to modify the lense part to hold my pieces close to the lights.

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These come from the inside of the monitor just behind the black screen, not an add on privacy screen. I suspect there is some of the same physics design going on with some of these sheets, though. Thanks for the info.

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Oh interesting. Hmm yeah I have no idea what those are made of.