Decided to post this in the main forum as it seems to be taking over my thread in Project Announcements. I came up with the idea while building my latest cab, see it here...
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,30538.0.htmlI wanted lighted Wico leaf buttons and had yet to see anything that did it well.
In my quest I tried pretty much everything out there for lighting. Using fluorescent lights, cold cathode tubes and neon car lighting inside the CP box all proved less than dramatic. The best result was with an LED shining up at the button, but it was still pretty weak.
The idea I came up with was to get the LED/LED'S as close to the button as possible and this is what I came up with...
You can see in these pics that I drilled a 3/16" hole through the center of the button holder to make a hole on either side to mount LED's in. The 3/16" bit is the perfect size for mounting the standard superbright LED's. It's a snug fit and won't require any other fastening.
If you have a drill press you can clamp the holder between 2 blocks of wood and drill down through it. If you don't then start the hole with a smaller bit and work your way up to the 3/16".
The results....
Of course it's tough to get a good picture of a glowing button in the dark but the first photo is the most accurate one I took. You may think 2 LED's would be too bright and distracting but they're not. The buttons literally GLOW... they don't shine. This is because the LED's are pointed directly into the button housing/stem and are diffused. Another plus from this is that the whole thing glows, not just the pushbutton itself.
See my
NEON MAME post in Project Announcements forum for more pics...and check out
FLYERCADE too.