Glow in the dark panels??????

[phil744]

Evening crew

Bit of an odd one, i was asked at work to produce some fire escape/emergency exit signs that glow in the dark simple enough task to do and had a chance to play with some of this glow in the dark paint.

Nowthen, me being me had one of those "hmm, i wonder if....?" moments, these usually get me in trouble as you well know,

We all have watches with glow in the dark hands on them and i though i wonder if the same could be applied to panel's? i know with the watch of mine i can still read it at 4am, well kind off with one eye close dribbling some what

To be honest i dont know if this is all old news and its been done before, maybe on old WW2 aircraft instruments but apart from that i have never seen it, im sure somebody wil correct me if im wrong.

So, grabbed an old panel, sanded it and painted it and shoved it in the engraver, just a rushed quick job to see if it works and to be honest i am a little shocked with the result,

The paint is flurecent yellow, hence the green funky look in the first photo, the only thing used for illumination is my 32" monitor, i dont know why, i guess there is quite alot of UV output from CCFL back lit LCD panels but the contrast is somthing else, really crisp and sharp much better than white engraving if im honest, camera is a fujifilm S100FS just set to auto, im not a photographer i always have it set to auto.

Second picture, same camera, same settings, monitor switched off but main workshop lights were on and i have little LED's in my office celing so not totally dark i could probably just read a book, be honest the photo makes it look a lot brighter than what it is but i could clearlly read it without straining. if you take a normal back lit panel and illuminated it to 5v this one at a guess would be at about 15% brightness.

Obviously there is a down side when it comes to glow time, at the moment its just a few mins before its too hard to read, saying that im using my desk lamp to charg it, would be interesting to get a proper black light and give it a go, and also the paint is still wet when i took these pics i beleve that also has an effect.

But.... the light spread across the panel is to die for, it is perfect

Anyway, just thought i would show you, maybe its somthing worth exploring more, im gonna have a play (ive said that before ) and see what i can get out of it.

[Westozy]

Choice Phil, I'll be following your progress as always. My own panel productio is soaring now the last bug has been chased out of the CNC, I had a dodgy parallel port on the PC. An add in PCI parallel port card fixed it.

Cheers Gwyn

[Matt Olieman]

Put up a small black light (UV light) and it'll be too bright

Nice thinking Phil!!!!

[HansJansen]

I've been thinking about such a solution some time ago, but never had a chance to experiment. I am curious as to the result of the blacklight illumination!

Keep us posted please!

[No Longer Active]

Hi Phil.

I believe that you can purchase small UV led's, like a bank note detector pen or keyring! You can buy them from the pound shop, let me know if you want one and I will pick one up the next time I am in town and send you it.

Cheers.

Alex