Orval Fairbairn wrote:
In article ,
cavelamb wrote:

I remember Linda Rice's Lockheed had a really cool backlit panel overlay.
The panel itself was heavy aluminum sheet, but then they added a plastic
overlay that had an opaque cover. Legends and labeling was done by
engraving the opaque layer.

On the back side of the there were little cavities carved for grain of rice
(well duh!) light bulbs.

The effect was quite stunning.

So does anybody know where to find this kind of plastic for the overlay?


Thanks,

Richard

If you wish to be more up-to-date, use red LEDs instead of the
grain-of-wheat bulbs. You CAN use clear plexiglass, with an inverted
bevel at the instrument holes. I would suggest painting both sides of
the plexiglass white, to contain the light, before the cutting/engraving
operations. The front face can be left whit or painted in your desired
color.


White plexiglass diffuses and spreads the light more evenly than
clear. One nice thing about LED illumination is you can install both
red and white LED so you can either make illumination switchable or you
can change you mind later with minimum wiring problems.

For the truly creative use blue-green LED so you can play special ops
with NVG.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired