Fraen LED lenses

Get a piece of clear acrylic, have one side frosted, and light it from the edge.

Good Luck! Rich

That's a new one...I think I've tried everything and a number of different materials.

I have some matte finish (and frosted) in the shop.

Are you saying just shoot the light right into the edge?

Maybe 1/4" material would be best in that case?

Sounds interesting. At 1/4" I could actually drill a hole into the edge for the LED to fit in ?

Been looking at the luxeon stuff as well, just for interest. I think if you need to light an edge lit sheet you need to use the batwing config., which shoot out of the side, parallel to the PCB plain, not the lambertian types. But it seems that you will loose photons, that point to the nearest edge. ( I could be wrong!)

I find the Luxeon site quite confusing, very difficult to choose a type

martin

If you try placing the LED in the hole you drill in the plastic....have a fire extinguisher handy. They get extremely hot............. I have "back-lit" various size panels with LED's but I have placed them so that they 'reflect" off the back/sides and are facing the rear/sides with a white cover over them. I use several standard 5mm LED's instead of one Luxeon. Try different LED output angles and move them around, you should be able to make it work. Most all of the LED Signs made today use this technique. Good luck.

Yeah, I'm to the point of switching to 5mm devices and see what happens.

I've found you have to mount on the top and bottom of a box shotting up and dpwn and then try to eliminate those hots spots....less problematic. My box is only 2.5" deep.

The Luxeons are just too powerful.....maybe 4 or 5 T1/34 in a row top and bottom may work out better.

I'll try the edge lighting trick today.

Thanks guys.