Building My Portable Flat Panel

DIY: Build Your Own Ultra-Durable Travel Flat Panel!

Following up on my post about buying electroluminescent panels from China, here’s a quick tutorial on how to build a super light and ultra-durable travel flat panel!

EL panels are incredibly thin and lightweight, which is awesome. The downside? They’re quite fragile and have an annoying habit of giving you a decent jolt if you’re not careful when handling them (we’re talking 110V, 800Hz – not exactly a gentle static shock!). To tackle both these issues while keeping that sweet lightweight advantage, the solution is pretty straightforward: sandwich the EL panel between two sheets of plexiglass and secure everything together.

First up, you’ll need to cut two plexiglass sheets to your desired dimensions. An angle grinder makes quick and efficient work of this…

Next, carefully adhere your EL panel to one of the plexiglass sheets. Those small double-sided adhesive squares typically used for mounting photos in albums work perfectly for this…

Then, close up your sandwich! Secure everything firmly with four pieces of trusty gaffer tape, making sure to leave space for the EL panel’s power cable to exit cleanly…

And voilà! You’ve got yourself a beautiful, durable, and travel-ready flat panel. Big thanks to Julio for snapping these pics!