The Making of a Laser Etched Epoxy Light Box Display (Part 3 of 3)
This is the third of a 3-part blog series that highlights the project build of Doug Chan’s Laser Etched Epoxy Light Box Display. Doug is a member of Maker Cube, a makerspace based in Langley, British Columbia, Canada.
To see Part 1 click here. To see Part 2 click here.
Making the Frame
With the main art piece done, I wanted it to really pop with a bit of backlighting. To do this I needed a frame or box to house everything. I started with a piece of left over Paduk, a bright orange tropical hardwood I had in the shop. With just over 12 inches by 1 inch by ¾ inch I split it down the middle on the shortest edge and planed it flat to make two strips of ¼ inch thickness. I roughly measured the lengths of each side of the acrylic, which was about 4” x 6”, and cut the excess.
Mitering the ends to get 45° was tricky with such a thin material so I set up the spindle sander and slowly brought it down to length. Final glue up was fairly simple, just lay all the pieces flat on a strip of tape, glue the corners and close the sides up using the tape to hold it in place. Small gaps can be filled with left over Paduk dust from sanding and wood glue. Once everything was set, then all sides of the frame were carefully hand sanded up to 120 grit. The final finish is an all-natural beeswax and mineral oil mixture which smells great and will seal the wood.
Electronics
For the electronics I’m using a short strip of 5V LEDs sourced from Amazon. A scrap USB cable soldered to the middle is a simple way to power the project.
The trickiest part was getting the light to diffuse evenly and minimizing the visibility of point lights. To overcome this I put a small strip of MDF on the front edge to block direct line of sight through the art piece. The diffuser itself is another piece of acrylic with a white film on it.
Acrylic is typically shipped with this film to protect it from scratches before use. In this case, I have the clear acrylic sitting right on top of the LEDs causing the light to bounce inside of it and evenly distributed across the whole panel. The acrylic is slightly tilted to bounce the light forward and the final piece to enclose it all is a white piece of acrylic cut to size and notched for the USB.
And here is the final product!
Are you interested in learning how to make things? Maker Cube offers weekly classes in welding, woodworking, 3D design and printing, laser cutting, and many other types of fabrication methods.
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