Laser Engraved LED Night Light

Hi guys, In this Instructables I am going to build an Engraved LED Night Light. Its powered by a low voltage power supply and consumes 4 watts only.

I gifted this to my friend who has a thing for dancing. She is amazing so should be her birthday gift :)

I also made a video while building this. You can watch it on my youtube channel Canvas of Dreams. Make sure you hit Subscribe button so you can stay up to date with all the projects I put out. I have some amazing projects lined up and you really not gonna want to miss it.

Material :

• 19mm plywood
• 12mm plywood
• Half Round Beading
• Wood Glue
• LED Strip Warm White
• 12V DC Adapter
• 8mm Acrylic Sheet
• DC Jack
• Wood Stain
• Connecting Wires

Tools Used :

• Mitre Saw
• Chisel
• Soldering Ion
• Laser Cutter

Stand of the night light is designed in Fusion 360 by Autodesk. It is a 3D, CAD, CAM, and CAE tool and connects your entire product development process in a single cloud-based platform that works on both Mac and PC.
Best part is its free for students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and startups.
You can download it here.

Design Contains
Cavity for 12v DC Jack ,routed space to house LED strip, slot across the length to hold mm thick acrylic sheet.

• All parts are cut in mitre saw, for the curvy look on top I used pre-made half round beading.
• After cutting the wood I routed the front and back part part on my DIY Router Table Instructable of which I will put out soon. This I did to make the space for the LED Strip. In this way the white part of the strip is under the routed part of wood from both sides along its length.
• On the back part I made a small slot to fix a DC Jack. This Jack is directly connected to the LEDs with single core copper wires which I stripped out from a CAT5 Cable.

Polarity of the connection should be correct or else LEDs wont work if connected in wrong bias.
Check the image above to see which terminal is positive and which is negative.

Glowing part of this night light is made out of acrylic. Instead of acrylic, glass can also be used.

Now if you have never used a laser cutter before let me tell you its the most amazing tool for the makers and is very easy to use. You can sign up for Instructables Laser Cutting Class. Its very well designed with lots of information and projects.

• I downloaded the graphics from vecteezy.com and imported it in RDCAM. This program is used to do all setting including laser power, speed, alignment to operate laser cutter. I also added a text which says 'Some people learn to dance...others are born to.' All aditions are done in RDCAM only.
• Once file is designed I made a mirror image then processed it in laser cutter so the engraving is done on the backside of the sheet and front side will stay plane as it is.

Make sure to add an inch at the bottom as this will go into the slot of the stand and not be seen.

You can download the final file here.

For finishing the stand I stained it with dark brown stain and viped it off after few minutes. If a darker shade is required then you can leave the stain for a while. Longer the stain stays on the wood darker it will get.
Once its dried I fixed the engraved acrylic sheet in the slot and plugged in the 12V DC adaptor to lit it up.

I hope you like this project. I will come back soon with another project of mine :)
Feel free to ask if you have any question regarding this build. Happy making :)