My first thought was to try the usual places to see if there was something I could buy off the shelf. There was a few places that sold acrylic signs that would have been suitable, but they weren’t quite what I was looking for. I really wanted a completely milky white H with the LEDs embedded in the middle.
Well, I have a 3D printed, could I do something with that? I went in a hunt for translucent white filament. It turns out (for reasons I will discover later) that isn’t a thing. Odd.
I picked up some light blue translucent filament and did a small test print, but the print came out really streaky. Not what I wanted.
Then I remembered reading about resin casting. What if I could print a master, cast a mold in silicon, then cast the whole thing in resin? A quick Google for some tutorials and it sees plausible - in fact a bunch of people embed LEDs for cos play jewellery.
The problem is, all the examples I see are clear. You can get pigments to embed in the resin, but a white translucent one alludes me. Hmmm.
At this point I decided to go in to the local Barnes (a store that specialised in casting and other craft stuff) and had a chat with the staff. Apparently white translucent is really hard. The lady I spoke to thought that I might be able to get the effect I want by using a really small amount of pigment. Like, really small (she says that fully opaque happens at about 2%).
I buy a starter pack which has the 500mL of pink silicon, 500mL of resin and a bunch of measuring cups, containers and stirrers. I also bought some modelling clay and some spray on wax as I needed to make a two part mold. Unfortunately, this stuff ain’t cheap - all up it cost me $150.
Now to make the master…
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