Gaming

DIY Light table

I’ve been putting a lot of time into creating custom components for Arkham Horror. On the one hand, this is an end to itself, on the other, it’s a really nice test case for putting together components for the Dune board game. Along the way, I found that I needed a light table to align the front and back of cards, so I built one.

I should preface that based on what I found on the Internet, I was rather put off by the difficulty of the task. I don’t have any wood-working tools, no electrician’s tools (aside from networking stuff), and not really a lot of skill in those areas, so the thought of sawing, attaching, wiring, and doing a lot of the other things that appeared to be involved in building a light table seemed out of reach.

Then I remembered I had a spare scanner sitting in Cam’s garage.

From what I could find, it seemed like it should be possible to create a light table from a flat-bed scanner. The unintuitive part was that you basically stripped the inside of the scanner and put in new lights. At first, this seemed to dodge the wood-working half, and all I’d have to deal with was the electrical half. So I started putting together a plan and a timeline:

  1. Pick up scanner.
  2. Gut scanner (plan one afternoon).
  3. Measure interior, prepare to add lights.
  4. Buy lights.
  5. Install lights, find a way to plug them in (plan one afternoon).
  6. Put the whole thing back together (plan one afternoon).

I guessed this would probably take me a week to get all the little fiddly bits done. It didn’t. I finished it in under an hour. Here’s what actually happened:

  1. Pick up scanner (5 minutes).
  2. Gut scanner – as it turns out, it snaps together, and has 3 pieces inside which come out without the need of tools (5 minutes).
  3. Measure interior – no prep needed, it’s empty. 16x11x1.5 interior (2 minutes).
  4. Buy lights – I found florescent fixtures that are linkable and come with standard plugs. They are designed to be mounted under cabinets, but are exactly what I’m looking for. (20 minutes, $40)
  5. Install lights – Attach packing tape to the underside of lights and stick them to the base. Run the cord through the USB hole in the back. (10 minutes).
  6. Put the whole thing back together – It snaps back together (2 minutes).

The only real cost was the lights, which was just under to cost of buying a light table at Hobby Lobby. But it was certainly fun.