Ghostbusters Neon Sign Tutorial
Introduction: Ghostbusters Neon Sign Tutorial
In this tutorial i try to go step by step trough this more complex build.
In order to get this thing made you will need a K40 Laser cutter or a bigger machine.
If you have a 3D printer you can read tru this tutorial to gather some useful informations aswell.
I rate this project to be an advanced one!
You will need knowledge about Corel Draw, Laser cutting and Soldering.
Supplies
K40 Laser Cutter
a copy of Corel Laser (Corel Draw 12)
LED Neon Strips in the colors of choice (to be found on ebay)
a sheet of black or transparent acrylics
Soldering iron
Litz wire (thin electric cable)
Tweezers, plyers and things that help to squeeze in the LED strip to the acrylic sheet
9v Power Supply or a 12v Power Supply & 6 x 10 ohms Resistors
Suplerglue Gel & Activator Spray
Step 1: Getting the Measurements
First i need to get the measurements of the LED strip material. I measured it to be 5mm wide with a caliper without squeezing it together. This LED stuff is very flexible.
So i cut me a template to see wich width is best to hold the LED strips in place without the need of squeezing them to much. Mind that acryllics may break when the gaps are to narrow.
For this LED strips 4.8 - 4.9mm seems to work best in my case.
Step 2: Before We Get Started
You can basicly use almost every Logo there is BUT there are some very important points i want to meantion before we get started:
First: Think about making it a two part design from the beginning.
If you are working with a K40 Laser as i do, you are very tight on space as the LED Strips can only be cut every 25mm. so the shortest dot or line in your design will be 25mm long unless you paint parts of it black to blackout a spot. However every segment needs to be soldered later on and of course the shorter the segment the stiffer the LED strip is what can cause problems later in the build when squeezing the segments in place. 635
So under some circumstances it will be reasonable to make it bigger and make it two parts that can be glued or screwed together.
Leave enough space between each section of led strip so as a thick contour that surrounds the design. Bending the led strips applies tension onto the acrylics in all different directions and the tension adds up, specially where multiple strips are located close together there is a high risk of breaking the acylics.
Acrylics can be glued nicely with superglue gel. But i suggest you Get you some activator spray!
Give each LED segment a directional marking before cutting it i to pieces, so you know witch side to solder later.
The led strips soldering pads give you 4mm of margin, 2 mm to every side from the printed on cutting line. Only cut away the pads on the side you are not willing to solder to
Solder the segments before squeezing them into the actyllic sheet as they are a pain to get out again.
Step 3: Corel Draw 12
My K40 Laser came with a copy of Corel Draw 12 and a plug in called Corel Laser.
This is an old version that has some bugs and missing features but to my knowledge the only version that is compatible with the plug in.
In order to get our design started we need to install a Macro that gives us information about the line length!
In my Youtube video i explain in detail how to "install" it. Is is nothing very complicated nor time consuming.
With the Macro installed i start my design with a circle.
In the video i made the mistake of making it to big! Keep in mind that later in the design we need to draw an outer contour line what takes away almost 10mm in total. So keep the design 10-15mm smaller than the size of the Laserbed for now.
Step 4: Simple But Important Math
In order to make a design where the LED strip will fit in we need to draw every line in a certain length.
The LED strip is cuttable every 25mm so every line needs to be dividable by 25.
This is why we have installed this Macro before.
The circle i adjusted to the size of the laserbed has a line length of 694mm.
694 / 25 = 27,76
As this circle already comes close to the limit of the K40 i bring it down to 27.
27x25= 675
I need to bring down the size of this circle until the line length is 675mm, so that the Led strip will fit exactly later in the build.
Im my case setting X and Y to 215mm gives the magic number. 635