First paying gig with UCCNC and refurbed Multicam router

[motogeek]

Here is a quick rundown on a job I just finished with the refurbished Multicam router using UCCNC as the controller.

My buddy has a cabinet/display shop and he got a job to make a display for a retail store that needed an illuminated GUESS logo on the top. I wound up using 1" clear acrylic and 3/16" translucent white acrylic to make these for him.

First I hogged out the 1" acrylic letters (7" tall) to make room for some led light strips and then cut the letters out of the sheet.





Then I routed a "lip" into some 3/16" translucent white acrylic so that the "lid" would fit into the 1" acrylic letters. I wanted the light to show all the way to the edge of the letter so I used the 1" clear in hopes that the light from the led would shine all the way to the edge of the letter.



The white acrylic fit very nicely into the clear acrylic...





Then I added the 12volt led strips into the letters. These leds could only be cut in groups of 3, but they were "high density" strips so that worked out alright...
You can see my new favorite soldering iron in the top right of the pic. Google TS100, its just AWESOME!!!



I wired the strips together and ran a wire out of the back of the letter and tied a knot so that the wire couldn't be pulled out...



Here it is with the "lid" on top...



Here are all the letters with the led strips mounted in them and powered up...



All lids put on top using super fast drying acrylic glue...



As you can see, the edges looked kind of darker than the rest of the face, so I masked off the white acrylic faces and painted the edges of the 1" clear acrylic white first to help reflect the light back to the edges through the clear acrylic...



The customer wanted the edges of the letters to be black, so once the white dried, I painted the edges black...



And here they are all done and powered up. The picture from my phone does not do justice, these letters really looked evenly lit all the way to the edges and came out better than I expected.



I used adobe illustrator to create all the paths, stud and wire holes. Vectric Cut2D pro created all the gcode from the illustrator file. UCCNC commanded my machine to do its thing and I could not be happier with this product. Thanks to the brains behind cncdrive!!!!! Can't wait for the next project!

[Robertspark]

Nice work

[Derek]

Wow those look great.
Nice job.

[Dan911]

Thanks for the step by step of a great looking finished product!

[Greolt]

Thanks for taking the time to post. That sign looks great.

I have not had much luck with those LED strips. Individual LEDs keep dying. Perhaps I am not buying the right ones.

[Battwell]

Very nice!
I've been nagged for over a year to make another sign for my friends hair salon
Only 3 letters- so I may try this method. - wall mounted.
It's sort of backwards to how I did the last ones for her.

[ack1]

Very nice!

now please do another video about your retrofitted machine. I have the same one but with the original controller and motors. So curious!

[Haik]

Very impressive light designing! Especially the edge boosting using white!! Add to that your skills and knowledge of machining acrylic, which is a very unforgiving material to work with.
AWESOME!

[motogeek]

Hi ack1, I am working on a complete video of the retrofit of the MultiCam MG205 stepper machine. We just went through a hurricane here in Florida, so I am a bit behind. But if you are interested, I am happy to answer any questions you may have at this point. If you have the same machine, I can tell you that it is a complete joy to use it now with UCCNC as the main controller. EVERYTHING works! Homing, tool sensing, etc.

[CSC-Jesus]

Is the face glued on? if so, how do we service it?