LED lightbox
Some expressed interest in the lightbox I built, so here’s what it looks like.
There’s not much too it even though the design looks complicated, and LED’s do very well for the light source. I based it off of the Foldio2, which is a commercial 15" lightbox. But, mine is foamboard from hobby lobby instead of corrugated plastic (which is a better material I wish I could have used). I couldn’t find corrugated plastic to save my life. All in all, it’s about a $40 project of ebay materials if you have a soldering iron already and solder. White duct tape joins the foamboard pieces, and allows everything to fold and flex when broke down for storage.
It works by using high strength rare earth magnets that connect to each other to hold the sides together and make the lightbox. The LED’s are natural light toned white high brightness 5630 LED tape that I got in a 12v power supply, LED tape kit I bought on eBay that handles all the lighting and power. Pure white toned LED’s would probably also work, but you don’t want to go the other way towards warm white and those that take a more yellow tone. White paper (or colored if you can find some long enough) is held on by magnet tape at the top back inside of the box, and comes down over the inside to hide the seams and edges of the box.
The sides fold in:
and then fold over each other:
to allow the lightbox to break down for easy storage out of the way, to about the size of a large binder:
I soldered three rows of LED tape onto a flap that angles inward to control the angle of the light. The connectors all came with the kit.
The magnets are held on by white tape stickers I got on ebay. I’ve had to super glue some of them on, as the magnets pull are almost too much for the adhesive on the stickers, but that’s a minor and easily fixed issue.
