When information technology comes to collecting Funko Pops; Glow-in-the-Night (GITD) Pops tend to be some of the coolest ones to collect and brandish. Some Pops may have full body glows (glow particles embedded within the vinyl itself), others may take simply pocket-sized details glowing (typically glow pigment applied to those portions), but no matter the blazon it's an extra layer that actually causes these figures to… Popular! And as such a proper display should exist used to evidence them off in all their glowy-goodness.

A pocket-sized portion of my glow drove

Design

When you first begin to design your glow display, the first affair that needs to be taken into business relationship is where y'all plan for your glow collection to exist located. For Pops to glow at their brightest potential, they need a UV light source to charge the glow (the most mutual 2 being the sun and a UV light). So, if yous plan to have your collection past a large window that gets sun all solar day long, you could exist fine without the need for a UV light, withal, if that's non the case, then you'll need to incorporate a UV calorie-free into your display. In addition, y'all'll also need to determine what type of brandish you want and how to build it. Do you plan to build a custom shelf/display case? Modify existing furniture? Or something else entirely? From at that place you can start to build upward a list of requirements.

My Requirements

When building my brandish I had the post-obit requirements:

  • Must exist able to hold all of my GITD Funko Pops and accept extra room for whatever time to come GITD Pops (should be obvious, but if I have a certain amount of Pops, I don't desire to build something but for it to no longer suit my needs in a few months).
  • Any UV lights that are used must exist generally hidden (just desire an overall sleeker await to the overall display).
  • Must fit in with my office decor (Over again, pretty obvious, but I don't want a display that doesn't look like it belongs in the room).

And so overall, non that many requirements. At showtime I thought nigh making a wall shelving unit for a display, but soon realized that information technology would probably look a bit messy with cable management and in order to hide some of the lighting, the shelves would need to exist on the thicker size. After some thinking though, I soon realized that I could alter an existing piece of furniture particular in my office to suit a display.

My Build

I decided to use my cube storage unit for a display case since most of information technology was only being used for temporary storage while I was withal getting my role set up merely the mode I wanted information technology. The showtime thing I had to practise though was come upwardly with an estimated Pop chapters for the display (keeping in mind that I only wanted to exercise the top 4 cubes since I withal wanted to employ the lesser 4 for other items).

Each cube is 13 inches across, so it could fit three-4 Pops comfortably inside. As a issue, if I did all 4 cubes only a single line of Pops, I could hold 16 max; or if I incorporated risers, I could increment my max capacity to 32 Pops.

Going back to my requirements, I wanted to ensure my display looked nice, so I ended up designing my ain risers by using a piece of acrylic and 3d printed stands. The benefit of doing so is that I can decide just how much of the Pops in the back are being covered by the Pops in the front. Besides, by designing them myself I was able to maximize the entire width of the cube and not be limited to an existing length.

Once I had my risers sorted out, I idea I was near the home stretch. I just had to install some UV lights and I would be done. I found a few pocket-size nether the cabinet fluorescent lights, and ordered corresponding blackness lite bulbs for them. I went with fluorescent over LED due to having better UV for a cheaper toll

With the lights installed, my wife would call it done, merely it just didn't sit down right with me. The UV lights were as well exposed and I felt like the glow was all the same very much defective. I know cable direction could've helped with some of the look, but I didn't want to keep moving forward but to have to undo a bunch of the work. So I decided to uninstall the lamps and become in a slightly different management.

The very first thing I did to meet if I could become a much ameliorate glow capability was to leave and get a larger blackness low-cal. So I ended upwardly purchasing a 4 foot long lamp, with the intent of cutting my furniture to brand information technology piece of work (something I was originally trying to avoid by using the smaller lights).

Due to this arroyo, I now had to cut a slot in the underside of the table top where I could hide the fluorescent lite fixture and also cutting holes through the private panels and then that the 4 foot long light bulb could span the unabridged length of the piece. This just turned into a much larger project. So my offset task was to detach part of the piece so I could properly modify information technology.

To my surprise (although it really shouldn't have surprised me), the pinnacle slice of the cube storage wasn't solid wood. Rather it was ii thin pieces of particle lath with a cardboard lattice infill. At first I thought that this would entirely mess my program upward, only I ended up altering my plan slightly. Instead of mounting the lamp fixture directly into the hole, I ended up cutting some pieces of wood to help reinforce the structure, and and then fastened the lamp fixture to that.

Once all the holes were cut, the lamp was installed, and the furniture slice was reassembled; I was quite happy with how the display was looking. Although, I did still have iv small lamps that I had previously purchased…

Putting the old lamps on the bottom, I was actually liking how much the Pops were glowing, although similar to my initial consequence, I didn't like how those lamps looked, so I needed a manner to ameliorate hide them; and unfortunately the shelves were too thin to try and hide them similar to the tiptop. In club to remedy this, I ended upwardly designing and 3D printing a fixture to hide the lights. Along with this, I also redesigned the risers to adapt 3 shelves instead of ii, raise the lowest level above the bottom shelf lite, and to help hibernate the cable.

Once these modifications were made, I finally felt that my design was done (mostly). Really the only thing I'll program to alter in the future is to probably add some wood veneer over the bottom lamp cover so that it blends in with the piece of furniture a petty improve. Merely until then, my glow display is finally the manner that I want information technology.