How to Design and Laser Engrave Multilayer Edgelit Acrylic Art

This is the third episode in a three episode series about creating multilayer edgelit art with programmable lights. In the first episode I reviewed the RocketLife programmable lights. In the second episode I made the light base. In this episode I show I how designed and cut the acrylic layers and created custom lighting programs. The acrylic design is a combination of Photoshop enhanced images and vector graphics done in Illustrator. The parts are cut and engraved on a laser cutter at my local makerspace. The lighting programs are done in the RocketLife Light Designer software. A big part of this video is showing the type of experimentation I do when I am embarking on a new project as complex as this. I save a lot of time and material costs by making test pieces before designing the actual project, and even with testing I had to recut several pieces to get the results shown. This series took more time to complete than my typical project, but I am really happy with the results!