illuminated aussie stainless steel shift plate

[Starglider]

The reason why I ask is because if you do the door sill and illuminate the lines in addition to the DMC logo, I'd definitely be interested. DMCMW just illuminates the logo, but at night it's hard to see the rest of the door sill.

It would be really fiddly and probably not very durable to do this with one sheet of EL material, if I was going to do this I'd use high brightness EL wire running through small holes at the start and end of each groove (so it can be held under tension properly).

[dmc6960]

It would be really fiddly and probably not very durable to do this with one sheet of EL material, if I was going to do this I'd use high brightness EL wire running through small holes at the start and end of each groove (so it can be held under tension properly).

Acrylic light pipe, and an LED on the end.

[Starglider]

Acrylic light pipe, and an LED on the end.

That would work but the brightness would vary a lot along the length of it.

I have incidentally ordered one of these shifter plates + the DMCMW sills for my RHD DMC-12 rebuild; we don't have any sills or a shifter boot at the moment, so I thought why not. Will wrap the shifter column in some padding + scrap vinyl though, I think it looks ugly left bare.

[dmc6960]

That would work but the brightness would vary a lot along the length of it.

Not with the proper taper it wouldn't. They can get very uniform brightness along some fairly long lengths and shapes. I've done some previous work with light pipes. Then again, the needs of the door sill would be quite complex given the size.

[Shep]

It would be really fiddly and probably not very durable to do this with one sheet of EL material, if I was going to do this I'd use high brightness EL wire running through small holes at the start and end of each groove (so it can be held under tension properly).

Acrylic light pipe, and an LED on the end.

I thought it was done with multiple LEDs under diffused plastic to even the light spread. Isn't that how the DMCMW door sills are designed?

Something similar to this:


Example:


I know run-of-the-mill "EXIT" signs have two bulbs behind a diffuser to provide even coverage. Should work in this case too I would think.

[Starglider]

I thought it was done with multiple LEDs under diffused plastic to even the light spread.

It would be very difficult to fit that kind of setup into the sill grooves; I use white LED strips a fair bit for PC case lighting and there's not enough depth (unless someone has made an ultra-flat SMT LED strip with integrated diffusers I don't know about). To backlight the whole thing with LEDs you'd have to essentially build new sills out of perspex and layer some strips of plastic on top of it to replicate the original grooves - adhesion issues probably not as bad as the stainless strips but still not ideal. I guess you could cut channels into some thick perspex with a router and have a seperate stripe pattern mounted on the bottom, a lot of hassle though.

Compared to all that EL wire is cheap, flexible and easy to use; I'm planning to outline the rear fascia logo with it, rather than LED backlight the whole surrounding area as some people have done.

[Brisfx]

Just thought I would say Andy bought one of these plates over to test fit on 6380 last night. Very simple to fit, looked great and the gears shifted beautifully, very positive feeling as it slipped into each part of the shift gate. If I wasn't currently doing a BTTF conversion, I would have snapped one up.


Brad

[DMC5180]

I thought it was done with multiple LEDs under diffused plastic to even the light spread. Isn't that how the DMCMW door sills are designed?

No, DMCMW sills are EL backlit.

[Shep]

No, DMCMW sills are EL backlit.

I'll be damned, I did not know that. Learn something new every day.

[dmcpom]

Still got some plates left for anyone interested 😃