Retirement Litho

[JDPratt]

Some of you may remember a while back all the questions I asked about doing a Military Retirement Certificate in a litho. Some of the concerns were whether the letters would come out due to their shallow depth and whether the whole thing in general would be a waste of time. Well, the client (not really a client, I do these for free) decided to go ahead and give it a shot. Below is the result. It came out pretty good. There are a few things I would change, but overall the new owner is happy so I am as well. Special thanks to BJBethke for the patterns.

1/4" White Corian, 60 degree V bit for the letters, 1/16" carving bit for the badges/emblems.

John

[Icutone2]

WOW that turned out GREAT!
Lee

[want2b]

Really looks like something a person would be proud to display. Have done a lot of lithos for family & friends but hadn't ever tried anything like that being mostly text. I now plan on giving it a try very soon. One suggestion would be to look for a small flourescent tube, I have found some around 12 inches. I made a 13 inch wide X 24 long of the Last Supper for our church and found by mounting in the bottom with a small foil baffle between it and the corian to block a direct glow it made the litho appear very evenly backlit than when I used multiple pucks. Love them for most of my smaller photo lithos.
Keep up the good work,
Rick H

[TIMCOSBY]

is that the way to spell "sergeant " may be but just didnt look right. my spell checker said it was right may be one of those words that dont look right spelled out.

[spalted]

Thats classy, nice job.

I was just staring at a piece of corian last night envisioning text on it. Guess I better give it a try, yours sure looks good.

[dkarcher]

Cool! Nice display!

[JDPratt]

... One suggestion would be to look for a small flourescent tube, I have found some around 12 inches. I made a 13 inch wide X 24 long of the Last Supper for our church and found by mounting in the bottom with a small foil baffle between it and the corian to block a direct glow it made the litho appear very evenly backlit than when I used multiple pucks....
Rick H

That sounds like a great idea. I don't know if others have the same problem, but the pictures never show what the lithos really look like. When you look at it with the naked eye it looks fairly uniform, But I have noticed that pictures seem to accentuate where the pucks are in the background.

[Kenm810]

John,

Really Great looking project!

A couple things I've done with good results, is to paint the inside of the light box -- Gloss White or at least High Gloss clear top coat,
to bounce the light around to help eliminate hot (bright) spots from the puck lights or other light source.
The other is to keep the light source as far away form the back for the litho as possible 3" to 4" if possible.
I know that means a light frame or box will need to be built deeper, but in my case I feel the results were wreath it.

[spalted]

The only way to eliminate the hot spots in photos is to use a camera that you can adjust the settings manually.
Lithos seem to me to be very difficult to photograph, you can either see the litho or the holder, but never both well lighted.

As far as hot spots in real life not photos, I have wondered about cutting the plastic panels that are used in suspended ceiling lights and using them to diffuse the light. I have not tried it, but I think it might work to even out the light.

[brdad]

Nice job on this project.

I have used aluminum foil tape in my litho boxes and it has helped the dispersion of light some as well as dropping the internal temperature. You can read my results in this thread.

On my todo list is creating a LED board to backlight the lithos. My goal is to be able to light a litho in a box or wall hung frame less than 1 1/2" thick. When that happens I'll show my results and may even assemble some to sell if there is any interest.