Treble and Bass Clef Lights

Edge-lit LED signs made with the help of a friend at Hack Bergen. I did the engraving and made the bases and frames, he did the electrical work, and we needed all four hands for final assembly.

No alto/tenor clef. Yet. I'm weird about making things match, so I'd want to get a similar piece of aluminum plate for the base first. Matching aluminum plate located; last clef will be made at some point.

Each one measures 12cm wide at the base, 10cm wide at the acrylic part, and just over 20cm tall. The acrylic plates are 0.6cm thick, and the bases are about 2.5cm wide. Strips of RGB LEDs are glued along all four edges and wired up to the controller via 3m of some old network cable spliced into a Y-shape to connect both signs together (usually they show the same colour at the same time, but I used photos of two different ones here, just because). The controller box has an IR sensor for remote control. Can set the lights to any solid colour, or have them strobe or fade through all hues in sequence, at a variety of speeds. See them in action here: youtu.be/5GTaIJWAzzc

The bases are some old aluminum frames or pieces of a pull-drawer or I don't even know. I found them in a bin at the hackerspace. No one else had claim to them, so I appropriated them for this project, since the groove down one of the faces was almost the perfect fit for the plastic, and it flared out inside into the ideal channel to insert the LEDs. Had to enlarge one end and make a few cut-outs to fit the light strip (profile view here, if you're interested).

None of the clays I had would have been cured by the time I wanted/needed them done, and I couldn't find my damn craft foam (again), so to hide the light strip around the edges I built some craptastic temporary frames out of cardstock and masking tape. The blocky glowing sections around the edges are where the light is reflecting off of the masking tape. There is a large bead of Apoxie Sculpt along the lower edge to secure the acrylic plate to the metal base. Will update this deviation once I make proper frames. These cardstock things do the job and don't look too horrible from a distance, but they're not sturdy at all, and fugly from up close. EDIT: Made new frames out of craft foam. They're much nicer.

Time Spent: Uhh... about 15 hours, but with two people working on them, so more like 30 hours in total, I guess?

Tools & Materials: One 20cm x 40cm x 0.6cm acrylic sheet, hacksaw, computer, permanent marker (black ink), aluminum plate, pencil, Dremel, cutting burrs in various profiles (round, straight, tapered, tiny cut-off saw thingy), metal ruler, various metal files, sandpaper of multiple grits (260 all the way to 2600), buffer, Tripoli cutting compound, C-clamps, some cardboard from an old pizza box, palm sander, old network cable, JST-RCY connectors, round type header pins, RGB LED strip, electrical solder, soldering iron, shrink-tubing of various diameters (2:1 and 3:1 shrink ratios), cutters, pliers, bench vise, patience, superglue, block of scrap wood, shop cloth, plastic backing from a peel-and-stick whiteboard, duct tape, Apoxie Sculpt, ball-shaped clay tool thing, flat-but-pointy knifey clay tool thing, Veritas knife with #11 scalpel blade, 6mm and 2mm black craft foam.

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