As written in the last log I did experiment with molding the PICTIL. I used hot glue for that. I know this is not the best solution, but easy to handle and it was available. The top surface is a thin acrylic sheet glued on the PICTIL. The good thing about hot glue is it stays liquid when applying hot air. So you have some time to reduce air bubbles and do some rework.

I am not not happy with this SMD mounting of the pins as you can see in the last picture they do break off easily.

I did also some work on a new version with THT pins and the same number of LEDs as the original. More in a coming log.