Got the lights and marquee installed! The upper part of the cabinet forms a box (which I call the marquee box…) that houses the lights, reflector, diffuser and marquee. The diffuser is fabricated from a florescent light fixture reflector that I hacked into pieces and then pop riveted together to make a cut-down reflector. The reflector fits into grooves routed from side to side in the top and bottom of the marquee box:

 

Originally I had planned on mounting the led light bars on mounts attached to the box and then sliding the reflector into the box, turns out there is not a lot of room to work in there. So, I mounted the lights on the reflector itself.  Worked great…

During the design phase I was worried about the LED lights being to direct and being able to see bright spots. So, I cut a diffuser panel out of the diffuser from a florescent fixture and it slips into the same groove as the reflector and makes sure the light is even…

Then the marquee holders simply screw into the underside and top of the box, bent to match the angle of the marquee and powder coated black. Once the bottom holder is in place the marquee slips in and the top holder traps it.

I’m concerned about two things:

First, I ordered the marquee from MameMarquees and they did a great job, but the plexi they sent to sandwich it is too thin for my liking and I’m worried about it getting scratched. I think I’m going to get a piece of 0.25 tempered glass for the outside piece so I can clean it with glass cleaner and keep it nice and shiny.

Second, when I designed the art I did not really know how backlit film would handle the effect I was going for. Turns out that the B&W original Tempest art in the background “allows” light to pass through and washes out the orange. I am going to have to reduce the level of the background and saturate the orange neon to get it right.

Other than that I couldn’t be happier!