Although [Danman] was right on time with his home-hacked Valentines day gift, this article comes to you a little late. With the message on the heart changed, however, it could be a perfect “Sorry I forgot Valentines Day again” gift, so it may still be useful.
The concept isn’t that complicated, simply a strip of LED lights around a piece of acrylic. A battery holder and switch rounds out this build. It’s a neat way to light things up, but what we thought was especially interesting was the way it was engraved and cut out with a minimum of traditional tools.
Sure, [Danman] had access to a bandsaw, but as for actually engraving the outline he used a modified electric toothbrush! We’d love to see that build written up. If that wasn’t enough, the lettering was “ghetto blasted”, as he puts it, using a compressed air nozzle, a pen tube, and a styrofoam cup full of ceramic dust! Macgyver would be proud!
Is there an interest in the electric toothbrush hack?
Sure, I have a Dremel but it’s worth taking a look at when I dont have it in my tool box.
Yes Dan we would definitely be interested. Thanks for your write-up I bet she loved it!
Dude, this is exactly the type of Macgyver stuff I need out here in the desert. Tell me more about this toothbrush hack too. I obviously don’t have easy access to your traditional big-box stores.
My guess is he stuck the pen tube in the cup of dust, and blew compressed air across it, drawing the dust out through the tube and blowing it on to the acrylic while it was masked off. I never thought about doing that before.. if I had things to blast, I’d give it a try.
Yes, thats how I did it. The air nozzle had a brass piece on the end, with a hole though the side of it. I imagine to assist with air flow. It also works nicely to hold a bic pen. The business end.
I have used it for small scale metal ‘etching,’ and for the acrylic here. Not as abrasive as sand blasting.
The blasting was done at work. The ceramic dust is a waste product to a production process, so it just goes in the trash.
But where does the toothbrush come into play?
The toothbrush has a pointed oscillating tip that was used to put thousands of ‘nicks’ in the acrylic. With a sharpened point, it allowed me to draw it on. And the toothbrush is a lot lighter than most of the engravers I have used.
I am debating doing a write up on my methods of acrylic defacing. Different processes to achieve different ‘looks.’
Thanks for the written explanation. All “personal pages/blogs” are blocked here, so I can’t see your main page.
An Amberlamp!
“Caw da, caw da amber lamps! Caw da amber lamps!”
Just posted a writeup to my wordpress blog on the electric toothbrush mod.