Light-up sign Pro

How it goes together

It is a shallow box with the text cut through the face. The LED strip goes glued inside, against the back and facing out, and the light comes through the letters. The four walls finger-joint into each other, and the face and the back press into them.

And if it is longer than your machine, it splits itself. That is the whole reason this template exists: a sign is useful when you can read it from a distance, and to be read from a distance it has to be long — but cutting machines are 300 or 400 mm a side. You say how big your sheet is and the sign comes out in sections that fit, with joints that put it back together as one piece.

The joint hides in the border. It runs vertically, and the letters are a horizontal band through the middle: above and below them there is always wood, whatever the text says. That is where the jigsaw tabs go, and they are what lines the two sections up and gives them something to hold. Through the middle the joint runs straight.

Where the joint crosses a letter, nothing happens. The letter is a hole: it comes out split between two sections and closes up when you join them. With the light on you hardly notice. The template still prefers to cut between two letters and shifts the joint there when the layout allows it — that is what the note under the drawing tells you.

One more section and the joints all but disappear. There is a bit of arithmetic here that is not obvious: if the length is an exact multiple of your sheet — a metre on 500 mm sheets — the cut goes dead centre and there is nothing to choose. Only when material is left over can the joint shift into the gap between two letters. Measured across eight real signs, the joints landing between letters went from five out of twelve to eighteen out of twenty with a single extra section. That is why it is an option and not a hidden calculation.

The letters are cut through, so mind the typeface. Take the material out of an “o” and the middle drops off the sheet. The stencil one is the default because it draws every letter with open strokes and leaves no islands at all; with any other, the note tells you how many pieces you will have to glue back by hand after cutting.

The back is optional. With a back it is a closed box that stands or hangs, and it carries a hole for the cable. With no back it hangs against the wall and the light bounces off it: lighter, less material, and the wiring always reachable.

Give it some depth. That is what separates the strip from the letters, and it is the difference between an even glow and seeing each led as a dot. Four or five centimetres is enough; if you are going to use less, find a strip with a diffuser.