2 color edge lit acrylic sign -- college version

[gwhiz]

On a recent post of the first one of these I made Perry asked for directions & or photos. I promised to make another soon and document it a bit since I'd not taken a single construction photo last time. Here is the result.

The parts:

2 LED strips of different colors and one 12 volt power supply.

Two panes of cast acrylic for the sign. Mine were 6x12" and 3/16" thick. 1/4" would likely work better because it would be easier to get each pane over its own LED strip, but 3/16 works.

One pane of cast acrylic for the base plate accent. 4.5"x 13 in my case.

1 board 4.5x30x3/4. Since I was painting these I would use poplar--but I had a piece of Cypress, so I used that.

I carved pockets in the base pieces for the LED strips and the wiring.
- One of the LED's sits in the bottom half of the base below the acrylic accent plate (this one lights up it's pane AND the accent strip). This bottom strip connects to the power supply, so there's a pocket for that. The slot for the LED is off center so it'll sit under one of the panes. Since the foreground graphic is white and I also wanted the base accent to be white this slot is offset towards the front of the base.
- The top half of the base gets a pocket for it's LED--off set to the rear, room for wiring, and a slot cutout to hold the panes in place.

The design gets separated into two parts by color. I designed it all on one MPC and then selected the elements that I wanted green and cut and pasted it on a new board. The designs get flipped horizontally as you're carving the back of the acrylic and then viewing from the front (uncarved) side. Carving depths aren't critical for this flat of a piece, and shallower is better. That's because the uncarved acrylic carries the light through to the top--take away too much acrylic and the top of your sign will be dark. The green circle, for example is carved at a depth of .08, but I applied a surface so that it's only .028 at the bottom. (No, I can't tell if that made a difference!)

Sparty is carved at a constant depth of .125. Deeper than it needed to be, but I wasn't thinking! After carving I sand the edges up to 1,000 grit to smooth them out.

Sand, stain, paint, rout, or otherwise finish your base pieces. (I screw the two base pieces and the base accent piece together and sand it as one piece so it's all flush. Remove the acrylic before painting or staining!)

Wire the two LED strips together (yep, there is a bit of soldering involved--you can buy connectors, but I thought they'd be too bulky). Drill a hole in one end of the base accent plate. The white LED (in my case) is connected to power and sits in the groove in the bottom half of the base plate. The green LED strip and wire are run through the hole in the accent plate and adhered to the top side of the acrylic plate.

Four screws up from the bottom hold it all together. The panes are pressed into the slot (which has been sanded to provide a friction fit) and rest above their corresponding LED strip. Plug it in and enjoy!