Looks fantastic! Wonder if there's a business in there somewhere specially with that much interest! congrads. RwD
And I bet so many people are pissed that hes not selling these doors pre built. if only 1 percent of viewers brought a door he'd be loaded.
Oops! Sorry I forgot about that. I'll find some when i get home in sometime this year. If i had proper equipment and a place to work maybe I could start producing. I have neither... Starting a door factory in an apartment won't be very popular among my neighbors...
maybe you should work on smaller things if you dont have much room such as a 300mm by 300mm pic for my wall
Wow. That's freaking amazing, you should patent that and start selling them before somebody else does.
The idea isn't mine. The lighting method have been used in signs for may years. (many modern emergency exit signs use almost the same method, only there the image is printed on, not engraved) Too much. Just the materials is about 2000NOK (= 250€ \= 370$ \= 200£ \= 0.43645oz. gold) I started out on small things. (Look further down for pics) yeah. A bit late, but here is a couple: This is just 3 small pictures (A4 size). The one to the left is one of the first ones I made. This is the side of my DVD shelf. It's a cutout in wood. behind the cutout there is another sheet of wood that it illuminated from the side (there is some spacing between the sheets). The rest of the LEDS are just used as basic illumination. Nothing interesting
Is this possible to do with Acrylic? It would make for a great case window mod! (Sorry if I'm being ignorant; I'm new to modding.)
If you are thinking about the engravings in the door, then yes. I used acrylic glass. (just used normal glass on the outside to protect it. Just remember to hide you light source to get the best effect. What you are thinking about were actually done here: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=38983&highlight=bard+disco+man The pictures doesn't work anymore, though... Bard doesn't seem to be very active on the boards much anymore either.
Just out of interest, see the way you can see cones of light coming out from where the LED's are hidden in the frame. Is that just the way the camera picks it up or is it visible like that all the time? Also, what would be the effect of putting some sort of diffuser between the acrylic and the LED's?
The "cones" are visible, but not as strong as on the pictures. The reason for this is that there is a sheet of black paper behind the pictures. And this paper is a bit rough (And not completely black. It's more black-gray-ish). The glass in these pictures are also have some microscopic scratches that makes it even worse (from cleaning the glass with paper tissues). Remember that these were early works. You learn something every day. As for diffusers I tend to put the LEDS in one strip of glass, and put the engraved glass between these two strips. The roughness from the cut edge is a pretty good diffuser. You could also sand town the top of the LEDs to spread the light more. The downside is that more of the light will be spread out of the glass as well. The optimal shape would have been "toombstone lens" LEDs. I haven't seen those in ages, though. (and never in blue) Shouldn't be too hard to make, though. If you want an additional diffuser I would recommend the kind of paper you wrap in food in. It's as diffuse as normal paper, but it's more transparent. (if you use the white kind. Not the brown paper you use in the oven to keep food from burning). The best method is to hide the part of the glass where the light can escape. The further from the lightsource you get, the more effective "total reflection" get. (I'm to tired to do the calculations on this now, though) This is why thinner glass is better to use. (Think about how thin a fibre optic cable is) I used 5mm in the pictures I posted here, which is a bit too thick. the door I used 3mm, which is fine. Could be thinner, but such large sheets become harder to handle when they get to thin. Denser glass is also to prefer, but is hard to find. Normal glass isn't pure enough to be used. (When you look at the edge of a piece of glass it's dark green or black.) Ehm.. I hope that explanation made any sense. It's getting late...
what else ya got? I really admire what you have done. Do you think that you would get this kind of exposure when you posted these? I'd like to see more!
