Making The Silicone-Vellum Sheet

I posted the video about how to apply the silicone to the vellum. I did a test sheet first to make sure I knew what I was doing. I also tested it out on my 1" by 1" piece of acrylic, It worked great! So I set up in a place where there would be enough air, so that I wouldn't be breathing xylol the entire time, my garage. I was going to set it up on a table, but the table I had wasn't big enough. So, I found the most level place on the floor in my garage and set up some newspaper there. The xylol is poisonous and will eat away at plastic, so you cannot use a plastic container when mixing. I bought a metal container from Home Depot.

I then poured a 1 to 1 ratio of xylol an silicone into the metal container

It's important to mix slowly so that you don't get any bubbles in the mixture. Bubbles are bad because they will stay there for an extremely long time. It took me quite a long time to stir until all of the chunks were out of the mixture. About 30 minutes of slow stirring.

You will know when you're done stirring because there will be no chunks, it will look like 1 solid mixture, and it will run off the end of whatever you're stirring with very smoothly.

It's important to pour all over your vellum sheet, not like I did. It took me about an hour to spread it all around evenly and make it look good. The sheet will become see-through, but thats okay, it's not going to stick to the newspaper.

Try to buy the finest sponge roller you can find, this will create the best texture.

I then decided to set up a light, so I could see how even the silicone was being spread.

When I was finished, I tipped the table over and set up a clean bed sheet, that I vacuumed, over the vellum. When it was dry, it stuck a little bit to the newspaper, but it didn't really matter.

My sheet was perfect, but I had a little bit of the silicone mixture that I had to throw away. :(

Building The IR Rails

To hold the IR LED's in place I need to build rails. I bought all four of the 'L' shaped aluminium rails at Home Depot for about $15. These rails will hold the IR LEDs right against the acrylic plexi glass and shine the IR into them.

I started off by measuring and cutting the rails into three foot lengths.

When cutting, I recommend you but a block of wood behind the saw to guide it. I cut every single piece at a three foot length, and I intend to angle the edges to fit together on the glass. After I finished cutting the rails, I measured every 2 inches, after the first inch, and placed a black dot with sharpie. When I finished there were a total of 18 black dots on the aluminum. After the dots were placed, I went through each rail and put a hole where the dots were using a drill press. I used a 3/8 inch drill bit, the size of the LED.

The drill left the holes a bit rough, so I smoothed them out using a filer.

The holes were a tiny bit small for the LEDs so using the drill bit, I carved them out just a little bit. When I was sure the led was going to fit tightly, I started to put them in with white silicone caulk. I used white because I accidentally bought that instead of clear, for the vellum. I applied a little bit of caulk to the LED and put it in the hole. I made sure all of the LEDs were facing the same direction, the long wire on top.

This was my finished product for every single rail:

In the future, if I could find the right size, I would use 'H' shaped rails. Those rails would hold onto the glass better. I would also be sure to use clear silicone caulk, so none gets on the tip of the LED and block light. I washed all of the LEDs after the caulk had dried.