I have always wanted to have a custom LED sign, like the open/closed signs you see at a store, and thought it would be great decor for my college dorm room. Since I have a great passion for aerospace engineering, I decided to make the text of the sign read "NASA".
Make an affordable but convincing LED sign with the word NASA on it.
Using LED rope, the letters of NASA can be created by shaping the rope.
Initially, I perused amazon to find one I liked but was discouraged by the marked up prices of these products, epecially if I wanted a custom design. At one point in my search, my frustration gave me the idea of making my own sign. Instead of using gaseous materials that a large amount of these products use, such as neon signs, I found this LED rope for $20 that I could bend into the shape I wanted. Using the Glowforge, a laser cutter available to students in the makerspace, I cut out the letters of NASA in black acrylic. Using a jigsaw, I cut a piece of spare wood in the makerspace to make the backboard of my design which I then glued the NASA letters to using a hot glue gun. I then adhered the LED rope around the letters using hot glue while wiring and soldering the parts of the rope that weren't continuous behind the wood board. Despite the cheap budget, the sign turned out to look great despite some clumping of the hot glue. It is powered using the same 5V battery pack that my LED suit jacket ran off of which was very convenient to the cost of the project.
| Skills Demonstrated | Project Artifacts |
|---|---|
| Soldering | n/a |
Entirely customizeable to any word or design. Runs off rechargeable battery that can be swapped out without having to take down the sign. In the future, I would like to redesign this sign using another adhesive besides hot glue as the bonds weren't as strong as I wanted and require constant repair.