Quick & dirty way to build a lightbox sign?

[HughMungus]

Want to build a lightbox sign for my camp, one of those that are readable in daytime and at night. Anybody have any information resources on this topic or quick & dirty ways to do it?

[MikeVDS]

A playwood box with some flashlights inside. Cut your camp name out with a skill saw? Quick and dirty. I doubt that's really what you're looking for. Maybe some more details of what you want?

[AntiM]

I know this is too small, but maybe it would be a good idea to start from? Solar would be perfect for a camp sign.

I use one of these small house number panels as the "license plate" on the rhoadescar, I crashed the numbers into "Anti M"

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/d ... mber=92650

[HughMungus]

A playwood box with some flashlights inside. Cut your camp name out with a skill saw? Quick and dirty. I doubt that's really what you're looking for. Maybe some more details of what you want?

Something like this:

http://www.anythingdisplay.com/page/dis ... Lightboxes

Where you have the box, a piece of acrylic with lettering on it, visible during day and night. I'm sort of asking both how to make one and if there's a turnkey solution already. I mean I could go get a sign from somewhere and use that but are those sold in stores somewhere? And if I did find an existing sign and wanted to replace the sign part, what kind of lettering material is used to make it opaque enough for day and transparent enough for lighting at night?

[Toolmaker]

A playwood box with some flashlights inside. Cut your camp name out with a skill saw? Quick and dirty. I doubt that's really what you're looking for. Maybe some more details of what you want?

Something like this:

http://www.anythingdisplay.com/page/dis ... Lightboxes

Where you have the box, a piece of acrylic with lettering on it, visible during day and night. I'm sort of asking both how to make one and if there's a turnkey solution already. I mean I could go get a sign from somewhere and use that but are those sold in stores somewhere? And if I did find an existing sign and wanted to replace the sign part, what kind of lettering material is used to make it opaque enough for day and transparent enough for lighting at night?

Well as far as turnkey goes.. you could always use a lighting fixture designed to hang from a ceiling.. just turn in 9deg. That way you won't have to worry about sawing wood, using a dremel on sheet metal etc and installing the flourescents. If you go that plug and play route your gfx can be inked on the plastic.. I think they use acrylic for that sort of thing but I am not 100% sure. The EL signage looks good in the day and especially at night, you might want to drop bigbluedoggy a line, theirs was a great looking sign even though it wasn't USA made. My preference is flaming signage of course.. but you wanted quick and dirty. Check into some sign places that do vinyl .. they may also have some tips for the front of your sign.

[phil]

Something like this:

http://www.anythingdisplay.com/page/dis ... Lightboxes

Where you have the box, a piece of acrylic with lettering on it, visible during day and night.

Light boxes are used in the photo industry to view slides and in the engineering industry to do tracings of blueprints. An example is at eBay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Multiplex-LIGHT-BOX ... dZViewItem
They should be available in many sizes, they'll run on 110VAC, although small ones will run on batteries.

Letters are also available everywhere. Frankly, you could spray paint through stencils; your black or red or other color letters on a white background will show in daylight and be opaque enough when lighted from behind. You can get stick-on letters by googling
self-adhesive lettering
- I got a a half million hits, several of which were for self-adheshive lettering.

If you find a used sign, break out any custom signage, cut a piece of white translucent plastic to fit, and tape the letters on it.

[bigbluedoggy]

you might want to drop bigbluedoggy a line, theirs was a great looking sign even though it wasn't USA made.

Oh my big blue ears are all a tingle.... or did I just forget to close the flap in the back of my dogsuit... no matter. If you are looking for a cheap solution, you won't want to go the route I did. As has been noted by others on here and myself, our signs were not cheap, but they were fun! Most backlighted signs are made on a sheet of white translucent acrylic. It doesn't need to be more than an 1/8" thick unless you're talking huge. You can cut out cardboard, art card or more acrylic to create your lettering and just glue it to the white surface. It will be visible by day and you can get a couple or a few cheap fluorescent fixtures to mount inside a plywood enclosure to light it at night. You want to use enough tubes and depth in the box to get fairly even illumination across the surface or else you will clearly see the lines of tubes. The deeper the box, the more that is minimized. The type of acrylic used will also determine how diffuse the light becomes thru it. Fluorescents only work if you are prepared to power them somehow which adds a whole other level of expense unless you are on part of the grid (grid? what grid?). You could get some strips of LEDs and run the whole thing off solar or batteries or a combo of the two, but again...$$$$

Good luck!

[robotland]

Another solution, although it DOES require some labor- Cut out the text with a saw, thus creating a strong negative space that gives a strong daylight read. This does, however, open the interior of the sign to dust.
Hushville has made good use of large screw-top plastic containers, each with one vinyl letter, and a solar pathway light fixture on top...Using opaque (whitish) containers maximizes the diffusion of the lighting. (Sorry, but I do NOT know where the containers were obtained...Phil? Petermans?) These are obviously dust-tight, and looked great.