Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello Everyone,

I just joined this forum, and so far, I have to say that there is a great deal of information here, and I am looking forward to sharing ideas with all of you.

I had a question, which I was hoping someone here can help me with: I am looking for some sort of a plastic material, that is translucent for inlay work. Basically "mother of toilet seat" that would allow light to come through. I am building a guitar neck which will have inlay, but under the inlay, I will place LED's, so that with a pull-pot, the neck would basically light up. I do not want the LED's to be visible, hence the "translucent" requirement.

Can anyone recommend some sort of plastic sheet that is thin enough for this type of work? I have been looking at pick-guard material for this, but everything I have been able to find so far is opaque. I have also looked at some Acrylic suppliers, but most of the sheets they sell are 1/8 or thicker.

Thank you in advance for any of your guidance and Ideas!

-CyborgCNC
http://www.cncguitar.org:7171

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-CyborgCNC
http://www.cncguitar.com
https://www.facebook.com/CncGuitar

Charles Freeborn is making some cool stuff called Astroguard. You can get it in about any color you want and it is VERY VERY cool. ... Think TorTis but in all kinds of funky colors. I doubt this is tough enough to put on a fingerboard, but for other areas I would think it would work fine.

http://www.charlesfreeborn.com

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Thanks for the plug Brock!
Yes, we've got some very innovative patterns, and some new ones that aren't on the web site yet. Including a Snow Leapord print that looks very much like it's namesake.
We're re-naming the materials as Beaugard (as all the patterns no longer look like comet tails) and will have both sheet stock and ready made pickguards at our table in Miami. We've been out of town for a week and have fallen a little behind, but we'll get the new styles up on the site asap.
Thanks!
-C

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Freeborn Guitars
and home of BeauGuard©

I actually made a translucent rosette by accident, and it may be just what you are looking for.

I got the bright idea to try to use some of the mother of pearl plastic binding from stewmac and using heat, bend it into a rosette. I used a hair dryer to heat the material and it bent quite easily into the shape I wanted. When I sanded it flush with the top of the guitar, you could actually see the grain of the wood beneath it. Otherwise, it looked like mother of pearl.

I didnt use it and discarded the idea, but from what you are looking for, this may solve your problem. The stuff is rather cheap also. I have several pieces of it and will send you some to try if you want it. Both LMI and Stewmac sell it.

Other plastic type binding materials like tortise may work just as easily as this did if you dont like the pearl look.

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Reguards,

Ken H

Freemans has epoxy and urethane casting resin. They carry a lot of things for prototype work for CNC, die-casting, various foams, machinable wax...! Interesting place!

Pour your own and make it translucent/thin/thick/any color as you like!

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

Hi CyborgCNC, welcome to the OLF!

In my real work, I design enterprise WLAN access point products at a small startup company. These have beautiful uniform translucent LED light bar areas on the plastic cases for various status needs. An example of the kind of thing I'm talking about can be seen here (Seagate external HD) (this is not the company I work for, but is the look/feel that we are acheiving). Is this the kind of thing that you're looking for?

In conjunction with an industrial design company that we retain to do our plastic case look & feel and production design work, I have done many experiments with different colors/brightness LED's, plastics, and light launching techniques. In my experience, there is no material that you will be able to put an LED directly behind and not have a bright spot or have the LED at least partially visible.

If you want the plastic to light up uniformly without any bright spots or being able to see the LED/s, you will have to use an indirect end-launch light pipe technique (with reflective bends if need be) using clear acrylic/polycarbonate with every surface along the light pipe coated in a mirror finish (silvered) and with the surface you want lit up uniformly scuffed up/mottled/scratched (not sure how to describe this...). Also, if the lighted area is to be any bigger than about 1" in any direction, you will need multiple LED's launched from opposite sides/ends of the plastic to acheive lighted uniformity. This will all require a bit of planning, but you could potentially bury the LED's and light pipes in the neck and just have the display surface showing on the fingerboard. Clear polycarbonate would probably be hard wearing enough for a finger board.....you'd need to test it and see!

Due to IP considerations, I'm sure you'll understand that this is about all I can say about the technique here. I wish you well in your quest. Please post pictures when you come up with something that works for you.

Good luck,
Dave F.

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Cambrian Guitars

"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"

Thin-ness is not going to help your inlay, translucency will. You'll need to keep the materials at least thick enough to sand through on a radius, as well as put against a backing light.
All of the acrylics are slightly opaque to translucent, and as they sand out get more so. You'll need to test them all at the appropriate thickness first out of the guitar to make sure you get the desired effect. You may also want to do it with your glue being used as well on a simple test board.

Don't underestimate the high value of testing and spending time on new materials and projects. It may just save you from wasting expensive items, as well as lead to very cool new techniques.

Best of luck
Craig Lavin
http://www.handcraftinlay.com

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www.handcraftinlay.com

I am sure everyone probably knows this.. but in the interest of safety I will chime in....

Be VERY VERY careful heating any type of celluoid material (usually Ivorid, tortise, and others). This stuff is combustable to the point of explosion. Do not fool around with this.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Brock is right about the safety concerns of working with celluloid. Fortunately our BeauGuard and Tor-Tis from John Greven are not made from it and are very safe and user friendly to work.
-C

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Freeborn Guitars
and home of BeauGuard©

Thank you all Kindly for your responses! I really do appreciate the input!

I have taken the plunge, and ordered some acrylic sheet from an online supplier, in both 1/8 as well as .06 thickness. Obviously, the thinner the material, the more light it will transmit. One suggested use of this material was for a "light box" as being able to view photographic slides (http://www.eplastics.com/Plastic/Acryli ... cent_Color). It does sound promising, and I will make sure to report back to all of you, after I get a chance to cut some of it on my CNC machine, and run some tests with a couple of different LED products (with varying angles of light emission). Since the sheet is 1/8, I will also try to cut it on by band saw to a thinner thickness, and again, test its light diffusing properties. I was able to find a sheet in a dark blue color, and I will back-light it with a Blue LED, and we will see the results.

Does BeauGuard come in a white/Blue translucent color?

I would be very interested in running some tests with this material as well.

Thank again,

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-CyborgCNC
http://www.cncguitar.com
https://www.facebook.com/CncGuitar

I would worry about durability... the fingerboard needs to be able to take a lot of abuse over time.

Yes, BeauGuard "comes" in pretty much any color combination you can think of. We have a standard line-up, which is growing with each batch, or can custom make it to your specs. If it's for a fingerboard, no need to sand or machine to the radius. You can warm it up and it bends easily. When it cools it stiffens right up again.
I think you're going to have limited success trying to bandsaw (or sand) acrylic to thickness. In my experience using a bandsaw on acrylic that's more than about 3/8" thick creates too much heat and things get all goofy.
-C

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Freeborn Guitars
and home of BeauGuard©

Agreed...however, some of these plastics are VERY durable, especially Polycarbonate. This stuff is basically indestructible, and it is often placed on aircraft as well bullet proofing (the thicker stuff).

Can't wait to start testing some of this stuff....Polishing would be interesting as well, but I also purchased some specifically created plastic polishing compounds.

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-CyborgCNC
http://www.cncguitar.com
https://www.facebook.com/CncGuitar