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  • LED’s inside letters or stencil cut illuminated tray?

    Posted by Peter Dee on 13 July 2009 at 13:53

    I am considering a tray with LED’s inside stainless letters (such as Richard has demonstrated here).
    As an alternative, could the tray be stencil cut with the wording (under the stainless letters, internally lit with tubes and fitted with an opal diffuser panel so that the light shines on to the backplates of the letters?
    This would be in order to get a similar effect to the LED option.
    The diffuser panel could be in a different colour so that it gives a "colour glow" when lit.
    I’d be interested in any opinions as to whether this is viable and would be effective.

    Mike Harris replied 16 years, 5 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Robert Lambie

    Member
    14 July 2009 at 08:26

    peter i personally would go the led route mate… working with LED"s is easy and doesn’t take long to fit them. your way of doing it will work but im unsure just how strong the glow will be or should i say… if it creates the correct type of glow your after, fine if everything your doing is fabricated in-house then maybe give it a go, maybe even do a single letter set-up and see how it looks?… but its maybe a bit of a gamble if its just a cost saving exercise.

    be carefull if working with a dark background and led’s as you don’t get the correct glow/spread anyway… all you really see is a reflection of the leds on the back board and little else.

    i bought these letters in and installed the leds… was very easy and didnt take long…


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  • Peter Dee

    Member
    14 July 2009 at 09:56

    Thanks Rob. I saw an example here of someone who did it stencil cut but there was no real feedback on the end result.
    If I use Ashby’s led’s how do I work out the qty required?
    The lettering is "jamdani" all lower case with a caps ht of 438mm.
    This would make the letter "j" 555mm overall.
    I think theri modules are about 300mm so do I have to join bits together to fill the letter?

    Also, the fascia will be a salmon pink so I am considering a matt grey or white vinyl repeat behind the letters. What would be the best led colour for a good effect.

    Sorry for all the questions but this is new ground for me.

  • Mike Harris

    Member
    14 July 2009 at 15:59

    Hi Peter,

    Having tested SO many different types of LED modules i can’t recommend
    Ashby’s Modules, they arn’t as bright or as neat and easy to apply as the ones we now use. (They will obviously do the job tho if you do go down that
    route). However just to give you some more info on the stencil route, it will work but obviously no-where near as good as LEDS.

    I’m currently trying and playing around with sample boards and many different ways to try and create Halo’s for alot cheaper. So far we have created what you described above and an alternative where we fret cut the letters out of the tray, back up with an acrylic panel. We then dropped in and glue 10mm acyrlic letters and faced them with a coloured Dibond. Flourescent tubes lit from behind shine through the acrylic and bounce back off the dibond to create a halo.

    Hope that makes sense, as above all do work but nowhere near as good as LED Modules,

    If you want any more info don’t hesitate to ask.

    Good Luck

    mod-edit

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