Landscape Light Box Part 2

I've installed a small strip of wood to form an inner frame that will hold the clear plastic and print. Put primer on it which will allow me to see if I need to sand the front some more to make the strip and box flush. In the meantime I am glueing pieces of wood on the backside which is a piece that will hold the electronics and lights. The pieces of wood will allow me to screw the lights down to the back. So next time I will probably have the lights mounted on the back, after which I can drill holes for ventilation and hanging.

Landscape Light Box Part 1

I've been wanting to do this one for a while. A wide light box for a landscape photo. This one will be about 20 by 4 inches, 50 by 10 centimeters. By 10 cm deep because this will allow the box to stay on a surface if not hung on a wall and not fall over if it was less deep, thinner.
The box is made of MDF and glued, on the front side I glued small strips of wood that will serve as a frame to hold the picture and the plexiglas/acryllic glass, clear plastic.
What you see here is a test of how much light is generated by 3 CCFL's in this box and how I should arrange them. This is critical cause I also need to fit the power converters inside the box without blocking the light. The CCFL's are like thin tube lights (used in laptops and pc case modding and cars), they work on about 300 volts which are generated by a converter (a small box you get with the lights), input is 12 volts. Currently I'm using a 3 amp adapter to power these, I'm not sure how much the CCFL's can consume, but I see the difference from when I was using a 1 amp adapter. Way more light now. It actually lights up the room. May also try some LED strips in the future, they will probably use more power but won't be able to break (CCFL's will break if you drop them on the floor) and less heat, though CCFL's only get a little bit warm not ho

 

Light Box

I've made light boxes before, long ago, out of aluminium with LED's, it was fun to make but they were expensive in material and labour costs. Now I'm gonna try something which will take less time hopefully and cost less to make. Here's one I made last night (12 inches by 4 inches). It's stock wood which is cut to length and glued, the back is now a piece of balsawood, still thinking what that needs to be. But most importantly, the light, this is a 4 inch CCFL tube, the inverter I got for free (Thanks Pink Mountains!). This is setup pretty fast and is promising. Next up is a way to mount a piece of clear acryllic in the front which will hold the print, the back needs something you can use to hang it on a wall and also checking for any light leaks. And maybe some ventilation holes cause unlike LED's these CCFL's get hot.