DIY custom back lit sign

DaveB

Sometimes I get to play with some pretty cool machines at work. I work for a company that supplies industrial inkjet printers (the machines that put those date codes on everything you buy). Our product line also includes laser coders, so I decided to play with one and see if I could make a custom back lit acrylic sign to personalize our TD. I made the line drawing, reversed it and did a few test runs on some 1/4" acrylic we had laying around the shop.
I was rather impressed with the results so went ahead and made a little frame and added some LED strips, mounted the acrylic and LEDs to the frame with some good old hot melt glue and I think it turned out pretty darn cool. Below are pics of the various stages, the laser was an industrial grade class 4 60W CO2 laser and I was engraving about 1.5mm deep using 4ms pulses 100% power at a speed of 800mm/sec. it took approx. 1 minute to engrave the entire image. Also present for the process was a BOFA laser fume extractor (the laser literally vaporizes the acrylic and you don't want to breath in the fumes, not to mention the damage the smoke can cause to a very expensive lens).
It was a pretty fun and cool project I thought I'd share.

Steer beam laser in a 1/2" lexan beam shield with a graphite base (can withstand prolonged exposure to beam at full power)



Bench test was a success.


In case you hadn't figured it out our TD has been named 'Blueberry"
The boss was so impressed he had me make one with the company logo for his office....brownie points achievement ...unlocked!

Rick67

Great work