Light Penetration Of White Strong And Flexible

Discussion in 'Materials' started by safar, Feb 23, 2017.

  1. safar
    safar Member
    Hello community,

    I want to print some hollow tubes out of White Strong and Flexible plastic and insert coloured LEDs for a circus light show prop. I cant find any tests on the thickness of this plastic and the amount of light that penetrates through.

    The thickness range would be between 2-5mm. Obviously the thicker the plastic the more strong it will be because I will be dropping it - as long as reasonable light still passes through.

    If anyone has sheets of this plastic with a thickness in this range I would be very interested to know if a coloured light passes through (and if different colours pass through better than others).

    A clear plastic would have been preferable but the frosted ultra detail is has a very small bounding box and much higher detail/cost than necessary for this application.


    Many thanks in advance
     
  2. Bathsheba
    Bathsheba Well-Known Member
    Better test before you commit -- I don't have strong data here but qualitatively I don't think you'll see much light coming through at 5mm.
     
    safar likes this.
  3. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
  4. safar
    safar Member
    Thanks MrNibbles thats a great idea
     
  5. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    Another idea is to go to a hardware store and purchase some flexible translucent tubing that will cost you a small fraction of what it would take to print a tube. You might need to design and print some end caps that hold the LEDs and other circuitry that can be attached to the store bought tubing. I think another potential problem is that the strong and flexible plastic will not be as strong and flexible once it is printed into a solid tube shape.