Thursday, September 15, 2011

Floating Glow Display

We made an attempt at building the Floating Glow Display described on Make: Projects.  This was a fun build; of course, I had to make it harder than it had to be. Our idea was to make "U.S.A." in red, white, and blue.

For some reason, a long time ago I had bought a sheet of acrylic/polycarbonate, so I used part of that for the sign. The Dremel Trio made carving into the plastic sheet fairly easy, although I find the dept adjustment on the Trio a little difficult to fine-tune.
Jessie finishing up the engraving.  She was a bit nervous about it at first, then I think she had fun.


Wired up 3 LEDs to a 9V battery, with some resistors in the loop to keep from blowing it out (tested the circuit on a breadboard first).  Not the neatest wiring job, but some heat shrink tubing hides some of my sloppy soldering.  

A bit of Shapelock for a stand and we're done, here's the finished product:
And, with the lights off and the battery plugged in:


The blue LED gets pretty washed out by the white, it actually looks more colorful in the picture than in reality. I will have to find a lower intensity white LED for this build.

Now I have made something that I can bring to Maker Faire in NYC this weekend.