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DIY lightscreen project

what's the frame made of @Wookii ? the dots are a great idea to force the light to go through the perspex rather than straight from top to bottom

The frame is an aluminium channel with a T-slot channel in the back to take little corner plates and sliding nuts. I’ll post up an image in a min.
 
Hi wooki, did you manage to get any pics of the insides of the lightscreen?

did the etched dots go completely though the middle sheet, or more like dimples on the rear side?
 
Apologies, I completely forgot to come back on this one. This is the channel pictures from the rear:

image.jpg


I also found it available online, basically as aluminium picture frame channel type stuff:

 
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Hi wooki, did you manage to get any pics of the insides of the lightscreen?

did the etched dots go completely though the middle sheet, or more like dimples on the rear side?

Posted the channel above.

On the dots, no, they were just etched on the surface of the Perspex, maybe a fraction of a millimetre deep, presumably formed by a CNC router tool just lightly touching the surface to make the dots.
 
I also found it available online, basically as aluminium picture frame channel type stuff
Very interesting, so in your opinion does it look like something that could be DIY’d? If one were able to get ahold of some the framing.

I’m thinking the etching could possibly be achieved with a light touch with a dremmel bit
 
Very interesting, so in your opinion does it look like something that could be DIY’d? If one were able to get ahold of some the framing.

I’m thinking the etching could possibly be achieved with a light touch with a dremmel bit

Yes, it would be a fairly easy DIY job if you can get the materials. That framing that I linked might not be quite the right size, you just need the internal gap to be around 1mm larger than the sum of the sheets you are inserting in it.

So for example, I think the Lightscreen one might be around 12mm inside, and that takes the 3mm solid white rear sheet, the 5mm clear/etched sheet, and a 3mm diffuser sheet.

You could certainly do it with a Dremmel if you wanted, but it would take a looooong time - at a rough guess there's a dot every 5mm, so on a 600mm x 400mm panel that like 9600 or so dots!! I'd probably be more inclined to order it from a CNC shop, or find somewhere that actually make these etched sheets for light boxes already.

All that said though, by the time you've bought the three types of perspex cut to size, had the CNC work done on the clear panel, bought the framing and fixings, sourced the gradient window film, bought the high output LED strips, cable, connectors and power supply, and had some clips made up to hang on the tank - you're probably not that far off the price of buying a Lightscreen off the shelf.
 
9600 or so dots!!
Christ yeah that’s a lot, I think I had 5cm spacings in my head, so seemed achievable.

you're probably not that far off the price of buying a Lightscreen off the shelf.
And yeah I lost enthusiasm for the idea when I started looking up costs of the raw materials last night. For my tank at 80x45 was looking like ~£20 for the framework and ~£60 for the acrylic sheets.

Thanks for the info though mate, may revisit the idea some day.
 
Christ yeah that’s a lot, I think I had 5cm spacings in my head, so seemed achievable.


And yeah I lost enthusiasm for the idea when I started looking up costs of the raw materials last night. For my tank at 80x45 was looking like ~£20 for the framework and ~£60 for the acrylic sheets.

Thanks for the info though mate, may revisit the idea some day.

check this video out, you can get all the parts you need from an old telly, and luckily this guy tells you how to put it all together to make a light screen

 
check this video out, you can get all the parts you need from an old telly, and luckily this guy tells you how to put it all together to make a light screen



That's a great video. Might try and get hold of an old TV to see if I can grab the parts for future experimentation, particularly that fresnel layer.
 
Be great to see what you guys come up with. I don’t even need one but feel compelled to make one too!
 
Managed to get hold of an panasonic TV, took it all apart and....

CCC9A443-F003-4174-9412-A4AE9F24223F.jpeg


different method of backlighting unfortunately, no fresnel lens, just a frosted layer of acrylic and about 3 frosted diffusion layers. Seemed like a slightly newer tv than the one he used in the video.
 
Managed to get hold of an panasonic TV, took it all apart and....

View attachment 172049

different method of backlighting unfortunately, no fresnel lens, just a frosted layer of acrylic and about 3 frosted diffusion layers. Seemed like a slightly newer tv than the one he used in the video.

Yeah, that's a more modern TV with zone based LED lighting, you specifically want to look for an 'edge lit' LED TV.
 
Is there any way to discern which TVs are edge lit? Is it generally the older chunkier flat screens?

No, they won't necessarily be chunky. I'd just google the make and model number when you see a potential set - you can usually find numerous reviews online of most TV's and they should detail whether the screen is edge lit or not.
 
Looking into this subject for my new tank, I found this as a possibility for light diffusion. Found it on a forum for photographers who also make DYI lightscreens, be it for different purposes, but they want light diffusion all the same:
Amazon product ASIN B001H83B9Q - this stuff is easy enough to find it seems, and cheap.
I'm thinking of trying around a bit with some IKEA LEDBERG strips (5 or 6 strips of 25 cm), 2 layers of frosted acryl glass covered on the inside/between the layers with that clear mesh, maybe with a layer of parchment (also used by the photographer), fitted inside a box measuring painted mat/chalky white inside. Costs would be under 80 euro. The price of the lightscreen (non-ADA one) for the tank I'm looking at is 300 euro. If I fail, I'll still have some led strips for use elsewhere :) Might add a controller later to control the colours more easily via an app, but lets first see if the diffusion results using this are sufficient before adding more costs. Its going to be some time before I have time for this experiment though.
 
I managed to make one.
I used:
lenses from an old tv as above.
Govee controllable led strip lights from Amazon. (Although I think I got the wrong ones for what I wanted, so not sure if I can do a gradient.)
90° aluminium corner trim for the surround.
L shaped corner plates to fasten.
Total cost was around £30
 

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Took delivery of a Lightground backlight recently after giving up on a DIY effort, so I had to check how is was made. For future DIY'ers, the layer are as follows:

Rear panel: Solid reflective matt finish white perspex - about 3mm thick
Middle panel: Clear perspex with small (approx 1mm) dots etched into the surface of the rear (about 5mm spacing) - about 6mm thick
Front panel: Opaque/frosted perspex - about 3mm thick

LED: 5mm wide rigid strip of 12v high output LEDs to the top and bottom of the panel connected in series via a two core cable down one side.
Just to clear this up, the middle layer that has "dots" is 3 pieces of perspex molded together. It has dots on the outer 2 pieces and lines on the center piece. The 2 outer are also polarised and are directional. It's actually a very simple setup, the parts on the other hand, for bigger tanks are very hard to get 😂
 
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