Hey y'all, so I just finished my lil project, i opted out of dropping 100+ bucks for some cheap chinese crap (ive had bad experience with chinese products), and decided to go ahead and make my own led lit door sills exactly what and how i wanted and here is the result followed by the quick walkthrough:
Enjoy!
Step 1:Prep work/planning
So i didn't decide to documen this first part so no pics sorry but its easy.
1. Decide on a what word or symbol or both you want, i opted with the toyota symbol with "TOYOTA" in caps on both the front door sills
2. Print pattern on just a regular piece of paper.
3. lay some blue painters tape linearly, tape printouts over tape, and cutout.
4. If your careful you only have to make one "tape Stencil" you can use for both sides, i put them down then colored in with a red sharpie
note: I obviously wanted serious precise results, i'm not artist, if you can freehand it more power to you, skip all those steps, but this will look real professional this way gauranteed
Step 2: see the dremell, be the dremell
this takes a little bit of time, but if you're a DIY guy you're accustomed to it, and heck i loved it. But obviuosly just dremel out the parts of your pattern you want light to be coming through.
I'll be honest the entire "TOYOTA" took me the same amount of time the stupid symbol did, its hella hard lol, but its what i wanted to i used a very small bit.
Note: I also sanded down the little bump pattern and repainted black with vynil paint, again just my preference.
Step 3:Resin resevoir
So our next big step is to pour whats called "casting resin" in the holes. For those who don't know its 2 little bottles like 15-20 bucks, you pour together in equal parts, mix for like 5 min, and it will get super hard like plastic after it reacts and sets.
So what i did her was just use tape over the front of the holes (using my fingers to press around edges to ensure a good seal and not resin leakage.
Step 4: Time to pour!
So i already explained the resin, i poured in the back becasue of the curve, and resin usually comes clear, but for an extra couple bucks you can buy this white paint like stuff thats meant to color the resin, i juste added a couple of drops while mixing and it was a white opaque feel like the led apple on the back of macs.
Let set, ba boom ba boom. then of course you order a real of LED strip, like 15 bucks for 16 feet which i'm using the rest to accent light foot wells and underseats all over. And i just tapped into the courtesy light so that it would only turn on when door opened on that side. I didn't post much on wiring since there is a million posts on led stuff, but if someoen is actually going to take a go i'd be happy to finish the thread.
All in all it took maybe 40-50 bucks, and now i have enough resin to do the back if i wanted to as well, and enough Led strip to do my entire car... or pay twice as much for chinese stickers... lol you choose
Misty
Linear Mode
