 Today I'm going to show you how to take your laser and make these awesome LED edge-lit signs. It's an easy way to make money and you can do it right at home. My name's Jim and this is the edge of tech. So these are LED edge-lit acrylic signs and they're super easy to make with the laser that you probably already have at home. Not only that but they look really good when they're lit up and I think they sell really well too. So the kits I'm gonna be using today came from Amazon. These particular ones came in a four-pack for only $27 and that included the acrylic, the base, a remote control for each one and a USB cable for each one if you don't want to use three AA batteries. I think this is an easy way to buy these because everything's all together. You can buy the bases and then design an acrylic cutout to fit the base. That's totally fine as well but in this video we're gonna be using this kit because it makes it so easy. And the best part is I sell these easily for $25 or more depending on the market. So basically you sell one and it almost pays for all four. Also you always want to use ventilation when using any of the lasers. The best is to ventilate it outside so you don't have to breathe in any of those fumes but if you can't do that a very big well-ventilated area will have to do but remember fumes are bad you don't want to breathe them. Now it's time to jump to the desk and get a design ready and burn this thing. I'm gonna be using light burn for this video and I believe that is the best software you can use for lasers. Focus you f***. I'm not affiliated with them but there's a link in the description below for a free trial if you already don't have it. Once you have light burn open you want to make sure you're connected to the laser you're gonna be using. In my case I'm gonna be using the GUI Cloud Pro or is it Gwiki Gwiki Cloud Pro? I'm not sure how to say it but I'm gonna be using that laser. In my opinion this laser is a Glowforge killer. You don't have to be connected to the internet it can use light burn and it has a ton of features. It has been super solid since I got it. Once you're connected to your laser you want to get the file you're gonna be using for the project. In my case I'm gonna be using the Harry Potter crest right here. If your file's not an SVG already like this one here you're gonna want to trace it. Click on the picture then right click it and choose trace image. You can use the sliders in the window to adjust the trace and you can actually zoom in and see what it's doing if you want. When you're ready click the OK button and it'll create the SVG from that trace. From there we delete the original picture by selecting it and hit the delete key on your keyboard. Now that we have the trace we want to make a square for this to sit in to make sure it's nice and centered. To do that what you want to do is grab the square tool here and draw a square. Once you have the square go up here and unlock it. Now I know that these acrylic pieces are five by five so I'm actually gonna make this square 127 millimeters by 127 millimeters to be five by five. Once that's done lock the square again. Now go down to the bottom and choose T1. It'll make the square orange and it'll actually be a toolpath. That toolpath will show on the screen but it won't get burned and this will really help with centering your project. Now click the picture you're gonna burn and you want to choose a layer. In my case I'm gonna use blue just because it's my favorite color really and it's easy to see I guess. Once you do that you want to go up to the top and look at your dimensions. You want to change whatever the biggest dimension is whether it's width or height to fit in your box. Now I know that my box is 127 by 127 millimeters so I'm gonna change that biggest dimension to be 120 and I'll know this picture will fit inside that box and should center pretty well. Now what you want to do is hit control A on your keyboard to highlight everything and then go up to the top and click this button here which will center the picture inside your box. Real quick there's a step coming up that most people don't do but it makes these edgelet signs look awesome. But first if you're getting value from today's video please smash that like button and if you want to see more videos about 3D printing, CNC and lasers please consider hitting that subscribe button below. Now back to it. Now double click your blue layer. You want to make sure that that layer is set to fill. Also this is where we're going to set our speed in our power. With this machine I get the best results at 150 millimeters a second with 32 power. Also with this machine I know I get great results at 400 dpi when I'm doing engraves like this. This will actually vary depending on any laser you're on and because you can do this with any laser you're going to want to do testing on acrylic before you do this project. Now peel the plastic off one side of the acrylic if it has any on it and then put that acrylic on your laser bed with the peeled side face up. Now get your laser centered and aligned and you're ready to go. Once it's aligned and you're happy with it it's time to start the burn. Hit that start button to send the file to your laser and let's get burning. When it's done it's going to be covered in debris like this. You want to take it off the laser bed, run it to the sink and just run water over it. I actually like to use a paper towel and wipe it all down as well and then make sure it's dried thoroughly. Now let's talk about that secret step that makes these edge-lit LED signs look so good. You'll notice when you order them that all of the edges on the acrylic you get are shiny. Shine? And that's great. It looks cool. But if you just grab a piece of sandpaper or a sanding block like this, this is a 220 grit sanding block and you just quickly sand the edges on all of the sides that are going to be seen. It'll actually give them a frosted look. It doesn't take long maybe like 30 seconds but it's totally worth the effect you're going to get. Now the edges will actually glow and in my opinion that looks so much better. All you have to do now is take that acrylic we just got done burning, pop it into your base and turn the base on. There are so many possibilities that you can do with these edge-lit signs. The market is just massive. You can do anything from Harry Potter or sports or action figures or movies or album covers from records or CDs, whatever you want. Like I said, the market for these is massive. Here's a quick tip on how I made money fast with these. If you know anybody that has kids that play sports, it could be your kids, it could be relatives kids and neighbors kids, whatever it is. Make up one of these or a couple of these and it can be in any sport, football, baseball, soccer, anything. This one happens to be in hockey and I made this for my niece. Next, show it to the kids and the parents on the team. You'll be amazed how fast you'll start getting orders for these because the kids love these. Recently, I did this with my niece's hockey team and I did a special deal of $20 a piece for them. That sounds a little weird but I tell you what, there's 16 kids on that team alone and the profits add up fast. So it's definitely worth it to start showing these off once you make a few. Post them on your Facebook, post them on buy, sell, trade groups, whatever it is. And I promise you're going to start taking orders for these awesome Edge Lit LED signs. So let me know in the comments what you would put on one of these acrylic LED signs and if you want to make more money with your laser, check this video out.