One of the hardest pieces of this build to date has been fabricating the "light floor" that separates the basement from the main section of the case. The two main components of that challenge have been to achieve uniform lighting and bend the three layers of acrylic to fit neatly together and fit within the constraints of the case. On my third attempt I've now achieved something that I'm rather pleased with...
Edit: it's a little difficult to see the bend in the light floor when it's lit up - so here's a couple of extra pictures to try and make that clearer:
Some additional notes on how I achieved this and what I learnt along the way:
* The final implementation is made up of three layers, a sandwich if you will.
-- The bottom layer is 3mm mirror acrylic (to reflect as much light as possible upwards), this is cut to fit snugly within the case.
-- The middle layer is 4mm clear acrylic. The uppermost surface was sanded with 80 grit sandpaper across it's entire surface, and after rounding off the corners the edges were polished. This piece was cut with ~5mm gap all the way round relative to the two other pieces. The edges are wrapped with a 4mm wide LED strip (120 LEDs per meter) which is held in place by a few layers of white insulation tape to reduce the "spotting" of the LEDs around the edges, this was trimmed back to create a uniform edge.
-- The top layer is 3mm opal white acrylic and, like the mirror acrylic it is cut to fit snugly within the case.
* In this implementation I've not attempted to bond any of the pieces together as my previous attempts to do so were problematic, e.g.:
-- Bonding before bending made it difficult to bend due to the amount of material to heat up, resulting in obvious deformation of the layer closest to the heating element.
-- Bonding after bending was challenging because anything less than perfect bends on all pieces meant that the acrylic welding liquid can't be applied uniformally which resulted in "shadows" being visible at the surface.
-- With the insulation tape used to wrap the LED strip it rules out the possibility to make a bond at the edges.
* Some other random learnings/thoughts:
-- The mirrow base layer is marginly better than having white acrylic at the base for creating a uniform light at the surface but it also has the advantage that it has an opaque bottom to it so light doesn't spill into the basement.
-- Along the way I experimented quite a lot with sanding different surfaces, e.g. both sides of the clear acrylic, one/both sides of the white acrylic top layer. Ultimately what I found out was that I achieved the best result with this final implementation - i.e. only sanding the upper layer of the clear acrylic.
-- Keeping the three layers separate makes fitting the light floor into the case easier as individually they're easier to flex than one combind piece.
-- Keeping the three layers separate will make it easier in the event that I have to replace the LED strip at any point as bonded acrylic is effectively a permanent bond.
And finally, for now, I'm now contemplating in lining the entire main chamber in white as I like the effect that the light floor has on the rough white background that I've used to mark out cuts and holes. The original plan was to have a piece of black acrylic as the back plate and to leave the sides untouched.
- What do you reckon: all in on a white interior or stick to the original plan?