Edge-lit holiday cards

posted Dec 10th 2008 3:47pm by Eliot
filed under: led hacks, misc hacks

edgelit

Got 30 minutes for a holiday project and don’t want to get wrangled into some sort of decoupage disaster? Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories can show you just how easy it is to do edge lighting effects. Pictured above are three holiday cards constructed using scored plastic. You can use many different types of clear plastic for this, not just acrylic. The lighting is just an LED on a coincell. Black tape is used to prevent light leaking from the edges. The red and green version above is two stacked layers. This looks like something fun to scale up for a larger project or just to kill some time.

Comments [8]

tagged: acrylic, christmas, edge lighting, edge-lit, etched, greeting card, holiday, led, plastic

8 Responses to Edge-lit holiday cards

NOMADZX4 says:

December 10, 2008 at 4:10 pm

NEAT.

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_matt says:

December 10, 2008 at 5:28 pm

if i made these, i’d scratch up the tip of the led to disperse light better.

i have here, sitting on my desk, ~20 leds with the tip sanded flat, they make for very good accent lighting.

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Haku says:

December 10, 2008 at 5:35 pm

I really like that, simple, unique, personal, non-commercial (well for now).

And to take the idea further, replace the battery with an appropriate resistor, some long thin wire and a USB plug.

The idea reminds me of this: http://metku.net/index.html?path=mods/multilayer-animation/index_eng

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aonomus says:

December 10, 2008 at 6:00 pm

I just did a small-ish test with a piece of acrylic and a 5mm clear-blue LED. I ended up getting poor dispersion, about 10degrees in each direction, for a small piece (like in the tutorial linked) its perfect, but on a larger piece of acrylic (picture frame size) you’d need more LED’s.

Another improvement would be to sand the tip flat, or use 2.5x5mm rectangular LED’s. I might even try to make an animated gift-card since you could do one frame per layer.

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birdmun says:

December 11, 2008 at 4:29 am

I saw something similar to this years ago on metkumods. Looks like they/he have/has a new article up. I thought it was cool then and this version seems to be done without a cnc machine which I don’t have running yet.

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blizzarddemon says:

December 11, 2008 at 9:15 am

Perfect for the girlfriend

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modifiedmind says:

December 11, 2008 at 9:27 am

i think ill build one of these for my girlfriend, its her birthday soon.

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tatil says:

July 10, 2009 at 9:12 am

Edge-lit holiday cards – Hack a Day very best information thank you.