Backlit panel

cavelamb wrote:
Dan wrote:
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


Kool! LOL.

But the red/white back-light idea already crossed my mind.
I hadn't thought of the special ops angle tho.

I spent 14 years in special ops. When everything started going NVG
compatible things got strange. Interiors were painted flat black and
lighting included blue-green flood lamps, C-4 lights and stuff like that
there.

Some of the assorted lamps in earlier tests were so bright in NVG
the area around them would be washed out and unreadable.

As for flat black interiors let me tell you sitting in the sun in
Florida things got HOT.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired