Twin Screen Edge Lit Sign

by tobychan

18K5610

Intro: Twin Screen Edge Lit Sign

After I brought a string of 150 led Christmas lights for £15. I noticed how the patterns alternated every other LED. This lead my mind thinking that a twin screen edge lit sign would be possible that had alternating words/ pictures etc. The idea being to place one sheet of perspex in front of another. So here goes!

STEP 1:

First of all I print out on computer what I would like engraved on the perspex. In this case it was a friend of mine Chloe. I wanted her first name on the front screen and her second name to appear on the back screen.  

STEP 2:

Next I drew in permanent marker onto the perspex with the sheets underneath. Then flipped the sheets over and did this again so I had better reference of the words whilst engraving from the back. I don't know why, but edge lit stuff always works better engraved from the back rather than the front, once illuminated.

STEP 3:

The engraving begins....

STEP 4:

How I had to find a way to sandwich the layers of perspex together whilst still having enough room to fit inn all those LEDs. So I layered some bits of MDF like so. 

STEP 5:

Next step was to mount as many of those LEDs as I could in the space that I had. I figured I could just about fit 96 of my 150 LEDs into the space available. So I drilled the holes into another piece of MDF.

STEP 6:

After the insertation of the 96 LEDs, it resembled something out of the large hadrol colider! But worked very well, lining up nicely with the screen 'sandwich'.

STEP 7:

I then put the whole lot together including a base plate and gave it sides from thin strips of fibre board.

STEP 8:

The results: As you can see, the alternating LED patterns worked well in displaying the front words then back words, or both together. They can also dim slowly between the 2, flash etc. 

10 Comments

terrefirmax2 9 years ago

I love how your mind works. Hopefully Chloe does too.

subrotradeindia 11 years ago

hi can you provide me detail for some discussion

email: subrotradeindia@gmail.com

gordilha 12 years ago

Nice Project :) I´ll do this thancks

gordilha 12 years ago

Nice Project :) I´ll do this thancks

RaniaMomo 12 years ago

wow , does it always works ???? and what kind of leds should i use ?

tobychan 12 years ago

Well these are Christmas lights all on a long string basically, which is handy as you don't have to do any soldering/ wiring etc. The smaller the LEDs the better really.

RaniaMomo 12 years ago

well , i have another question , what dimensions did you use???

RaniaMomo 12 years ago

cool, that's awesome it can help me with my school project !