# Making an acrylic LED night light with the Acrylic Night Light Map preset > streets engraved in clear acrylic, glowing on an LED base Engrave a city's street network into clear acrylic, drop it into an LED base, and the streets light up from within - the frosted engraving catches the edge-lit glow while the clear acrylic stays invisible. This preset ships set up on Amsterdam (canals everywhere, which glow beautifully) and produces a connected street design with a border frame sized for the standard rectangular night-light bases you can buy for a few dollars. ## What you need ### Laser engrave + LED base (recommended) - Clear cast [acrylic](https://yxecreations.com/pages/acrylic-sheets), 3 mm (cast frosts whiter than extruded when engraved - worth seeking out), sized to your base slot, typically 100–150 mm wide - LED night-light base with a 3 mm slot - USB or battery, warm white or RGB - Laser engraver (diode lasers need the acrylic's masking on or a coat of dry-erase marker to engrave clear material; CO2 engraves clear acrylic directly) - Isopropyl alcohol + microfiber for cleanup ## Step 1 - Start from the preset Open [the Acrylic Night Light Map preset](/map-designer?preset=night-light-map). It loads on Amsterdam at zoom 13.6 with a square frame and a black border. Search for your city. Framing tips: - Zoom 13–14 gives the dense, intricate street texture that looks best lit - this is one preset where *more* detail glows *better*. - Canal/river cities are the stars: the preset fills water solid, so harbors and canals become big luminous shapes anchoring the design. - Remember the bottom ~10 mm of the acrylic sits inside the base slot - keep the most interesting geography in the upper two-thirds. ## Step 2 - Tune the layers One layer group, **Engraved streets**, and it's in **Cut mode** (`outline: true`, padding 10) - every street is buffered into a contour and merged with the border frame into one connected shape. Don't let the mode name throw you: you're going to *engrave* this filled artwork, not cut it. Engraving the filled contours gives wide frosted streets that pipe light far better than hairline scores. (Cut mode also means you *could* cut it - see Method 2.) Features: - **Motorway** (width 4), **primary** (3), **secondary** (2), **neighborhood streets** (2) - all black. The flat 2/2 on secondary + street keeps the residential grid present without disappearing; bump street to 3 if your city is sparse. - **Water** - solid black fill. Two things to know: large solid water areas mean *long raster engrave times*, and a big frosted harbor will out-glow the fine streets on the LED base. For canal cities it's magic; for a city on a huge bay, consider removing the water feature or cropping the frame mostly to land so the streets stay the heroes. The border frame engraves as a clean rectangle around everything and visually "contains" the glow - keep it. ## Step 3 - Export In the export modal: - Download the **per-layer SVG** (one layer, so combined = same thing) for engraving, and note the outer rectangle doubles as your cut line for the blank. - **Small-polygon cleanup** on - micro street fragments just add engrave time without adding glow. - Mounting holes: usually **none** - the base holds the panel. If you're building the sun-catcher variant instead, enable the **Hanger hole** at top-center for hanging in a window. - If you want a quick visual mock, grab the high-res PNG too - inverted in any editor it previews roughly how the lit panel will read. ## Laser Cutting & Engraving ### Engrave + LED base 1. Measure your base slot and cut the acrylic blank: the SVG's frame width plus a tab extending ~10 mm below the frame to sit in the slot. Many makers just make the panel 10 mm taller and let the bottom border ride inside the base. 2. **Mirror the artwork and engrave the back face** of the panel - the design looks correct from the front and the frosting sits closest to the viewer's light path. Leave the front masking on while engraving the back. 3. Engrave settings: moderate power, high speed, one pass - you want a uniform frost, not deep gouging. Run a small test square on the corner of your sheet first. 4. Cut the outer rectangle (and slot tab) as the final pass. 5. Peel the masking, clean with isopropyl - fingerprints glow under LEDs, annoyingly. 6. Seat the panel in the LED base and light it up. Warm white flatters wood-toned rooms; RGB bases let the buyer pick. ### Cut-through stencil lamp (advanced) Because the layer is genuinely Cut mode, the export is one connected piece you can cut entirely through 3 mm acrylic: the streets become voids that blast light. It's dramatic but delicate - thin street ribbons of acrylic remain between the voids. 1. Cut (don't engrave) the SVG from black or frosted acrylic. 2. Back it with a second plain clear panel in the same base slot (or glue 1 mm clear behind it) so the lamp is sturdy and the light diffuses through the cutouts. ## Make it yours - Engrave a name and coordinates along the bottom border - it sits right above the base, like a title plate. - Anniversary lamp: center on the proposal spot and engrave the date in a corner of the frame. - Try the circle export shape with a round LED base for a "city in a porthole" look. - Color cheat: tint the glow per-city with an RGB base preset - orange for Amsterdam, teal for coastal towns. - Stack two panels in a double-slot base: streets on the front panel, water only on the back panel, lit in two colors. - Skip the base entirely, add the hanger hole, and hang it in a sunny window as a frosted sun-catcher. - Make a "cities I've lived in" set of slim panels for one multi-slot base, swappable by mood. --- Open the tool: https://www.mylasertools.com/learn/guides/night-light-map Read online: https://www.mylasertools.com/learn/guides/night-light-map