Giant Lite Brite

Step 7 Cut and pollish acrylic rods

To make all of the colored pieces that fit inside the holes I purchased twenty 6' acrylic colored rods from Tap Plastics. They carry acrylic rod in all sorts of colors, but be warned, the blue, red, green and purple colors were all too dark to transmit light through them - too much dye I guess, even at the short 2" length that the pegs were cut at.

Yellow, fluorescent green and fluorescent red worked really well at transmitting the light through the rod - so I'd definitely recommend some testing with specific colors of whatever rod you get to see what works for your application.

I did some experimentation using clear rods and spray painting them with translucent paints (Krylon brand and Tamiya clear model spray paint). Some of the tests turned out pretty well, but in the end only the blue painted rods were good enough to use in the final version.