I don't have backlighting capability on my mip or pedestal, mainly because I built those earlier (before discovering this site) and didn't know any better. However, I am going to be starting my overhead soon and I have been studying how Gwyn did his. I'm not sure if I have the skill or the time to cut out all those rectangular holes for the backlighting of the words and annunciators thought.... I mean sometimes I spend a few hours just cutting out one rectangular hole on a panel.... it could take me weeks to do all those on the overhead.
So I was thinking, what if I used clear plexiglass instead for the main and change my bitmaps of the panel to be clear on the areas where the light should shine throught (it's much easier to do this "cutting out" on the computer than on a physical panel). Then you would stick all this onto the plexiglass and then just drill holes for the switches. From this point on, I would continue as Gwyn did and printed the actual panel bitmaps (with all the wording) to stick onto smaller individual panels (2mm plexiglass) and then screw onto the main panel. So basically the light would pass throught the clear areas on the main and light up the words on the individual panels and be block by the painted areas of the printed bitmaps.
Hope that make sense. What do you guys think? Would this work?
Regards,
Henry