How to Make an LED Light Box for an Acrylic Design

Hello everyone, I'm Efrain Gaspar, a student at Greeley Central High School, in today's Instructable I'll show you How to make a lightbox and an Acrylic design. This project will be fun to make and for the Acrylic design, you can engrave a drawing of your choice for your acrylic. There will be electronics involved in this project such as a printer, a computer, other electronics, and other materials. Hopefully, you enjoy this project because it will be fun. Materials will be listed below!

These are the Materials that I used to create the LED Acrylic Light Box Design.

1. 3D Printer
2. Acrylics (Any Color You Like)
3. A Laptop or Computer with Mouse
4. Tinkercad
5. LED Strips
6. Wires
7. Google Drawings
8. A Laser Cutting Machine
9. Corel Draw
10. Soldering Machine
11. I/O Switch
12. Solder (Rosin)
13. Heat Shrinks
14. Mini Fan
15. 12v Power Supply

For this Step, you will be choosing a color of your choice, for the Acrylic, then you'll open Google Drawings. Once Google Drawings is set up you'll find a Black and White Stencil image, anything you like. Now, since you found your image go ahead and download it then go to Google Drawings. Once you are in Google Drawings Click on Insert and select the image that you chose. After you put in your image click on "Line", there will be multiple line choices. Click on Curve, now you will be able to trace your image. Once you have your Image traced, move your image to the side and compare it. Now delete your image and group your lines together. Once you are finished download your image as a (.svg) file. Now you will select your file and put it into Corel Draw. Once it's in Corel Draw, make an outline of your acrylic. Once that is made, make your image fit to the top. Once it's finished, make sure your Laser printer is ready. Now go ahead and print your acrylic with your design on it. Once it's done printing and cutting your acrylic with design, you now have your acrylic design finished. Clean your acrylic with water and dry it with a cloth so it won't get scratched.

For this step, you will now go to TinkerCad and create a box with a lid and a slot for your Acrylic, Wires, and switch. Once you have TinkerCad opened, sign up or create a new account, then you will now click on 3D Designs, Click on Create New Design. Now you have a workspace to work on. Drag the Ruler into your workspace after that Drag a Box to your workspace. Click on the Box, it will show you the Numbers on the X, Y, Z points. Make your X= 120.00, Y= 40.00, and your Z= 31.50. Now Drag a non-colored box, which should be on top of the red box. Drag it to your workspace, click on it and make it X= 117.00, Y= 37.00, and Z= 33.00. Group them together! Now Create your side slot for your I/O switch. Drag another clear box to your design, make the dimensions, X= 42.00, Y= 20.00, Z= 14.18, and the height= 15.84. Make the slot go on the left side of the box and to the top right and group it. For the wires, grab a Clear cylinder, Make the cylinder flat on the board, make the dimensions X= 3.00, Y= 3.00, Z= 20.00, and the height= 26.00. Leave it behind your box, but next to your switch, there is a photo up top if you need help, then group it. Once you are finished with the Slot, you will now make the slot for your acrylic. For this, you will need a box with dimensions of X= 100.00, Y= 7.00, and Z= 30.00. Align it to the middle of your box and press the "Up" arrow 10 times. Now drag a clear box with dimensions of X= 97.00, Y= 4.00, and Z= 40.00. Make this clear box fit in the middle of the Acrylic box you made and group it together, there is a picture up top if need the help of use for help. Once that is done and grouped together, make the lid of your box. Drag a box to your workspace to make X= 120.00, Y= 40.00, and Z= 1.50. Now drag another box of dimensions of X= 117.00, Y= 37.00, and Z= 1.50, with a height of 2.00. Group and align them together! Now grab a clear box with dimensions of X= 114.00, Y= 34.00, Z= 20.00, and a height of 2.00, Align and group them together. Now you have your box and lid ready for printing. Click on the lid and go press "Export," click on the "STL" file. Save it! Now click on your box and do the same as you did with the lid. Go ahead and print those files on your 3D printer. Now let's move on to the other step.

Now For this Step, you must have your box ready and printed for this step because you will be soldering your LED, Switch, and some other wires. The photo above will show you what you need for this step. Now since you gathered your materials, go ahead and cut the wire on your power supply like the picture above. Now since you've done that get your solder equipment, heat shrinks, solder, a fan to remove the bad smell, and some helping hands tool. Turn on your solder and set the heat to 300 degrees Celcius. While that is heating up, go ahead and put in your I/O switch into the slot you made. Once you've done that put your wires into the slot and remove some of the rubber from the wire. Peel them apart like in the picture. Put on a good size heat shrink on both of your wires, don't heat it up. Now Put the wire (Positive Full Black Wire) into one of the mini holes of the I/O switch. Now go ahead and turn on your mini fan, grab your solder, hold it like a pencil but don't touch the tip. Grab the resin solder and heat the solder and put it on the wire that is on the mini hole of the I/O switch. Solder it, Use helping hands if struggling. Once the solder is on, clean the tip with metal wool. Now wait a little bit and put your heat shrink on and heat it up with an air heat gun (Blower.) Now that is finished. Grab a random wire (different color), cut it, don't make it too short but not too long. Remove some of the rubber off the wire and put it in the other mini hole of the switch. Solder it as you did with the other wire. Once that is done put a heat shrink on it and heat it up. Now for the LED, you should have the other wire from your supply which is Negative wire (Black wire with a white stripe), and the colored wire that is already soldered. Before you solder the wires on the LED, first you must put some solder onto the little bronze side of the LED. You only have to put some solder onto one side of the LED. Don't burn your LED. Since that is ready, put the colored wire onto the positive of the LED, solder it, now put the negative wire onto the negative side of your LED strip, solder it too. Put a heat shrink on it and heat it up. Now the soldering part is now finished. What a couple for the solder to cool down like 5 minutes. Test it out if the switch and the LED are working if not, you might have done something wrong but if you didn't Congrats and it's time for the Assembly step.

You have now made it to the Assembly step, you now have to super glue your LED to where the Acrylic goes, sort the wires so that it doesn't look like a mess in your box. Put the lid on your box and close it. Put your Acrylic into the slot that you've made. Once that everything is on and ready to go, choose an area where the is a slot to put in your power supply on the wall socket. Also choose a location on where to put your Acrylic LED Box, like your room counter, kitchen counter, anywhere you like it to be. Turn it on and you now have your colored Acrylic LED Lightbox design. Hopefully, you had fun on this Instructable project because I did and it's really fun to make an Acrylic LED lightbox with a design on it. Hopefully, you enjoyed it and had lots of fun.

Thank you for reading my instructable, if you like this design, share it with your friends and families.