The Arcanum Badge

The Idea

I was asked by Jason Haddix of Arcanum to come up with a spectacular out of the box blinky badge. And so we got to brainstorm a special combination of our unique skills at Hackerware - UV Printing, acrylic and laser engraving.

The Design

The Arcanum logo was the natural choice for badge design - a hoodied hacker silhouette with a duopoly of blue and purple shades.

Continuing forward on the duopoly theme, we wanted one side to glow in the daytime and the other side to glow in the dark - signifying the different roles a hacker is put through.

We also made one key difference - in all previous badges the LED backlit glow would be naturally circular but in this badge, it’d be a square as a nod to the digital grid a hacker belongs to and is made up of.

So a bunch of LEDs scattered as the square grids of the hoodie.

The Acrylic

This being a first-ever badge for Arcanum meant it also had to be special. So the idea came up to mount an acrylic layer of the exact badge shape with the ARCANUM logo laser engraved on it for more flare.

The acrylic layer would be transparent - meaning it would not interfere with the LEDs used for glowing the hoodie. In the centre, the ARCANUM logo laser engraved could use some fancy glow - but doing that required the LED to be placed right near the Acrylic edge.

Thus the badge “shoulders” were broadened a bit to make room for side-emitting RGB flashing LEDs to make the laser-engraved part glow. Those areas on the side as well as the bottom area for the LDR (photoresistor) sensor would be cut from the acrylic layer.

The acrylic layer would be mounted using screws on each side.

Fabrication

The PCBs are then pushed to production and are UV printed with the artwork. We print a white layer first and then the artwork layer so as to attain maximum colour accuracy for the artwork.

The Assembly

Some early tests made us realise that the dual UV print layers on the PCB are reducing the LED glow making them a little dimmer.

Acrylic Fix

After a little brainstorming, we came to realise we’d have to erase the printed UV layers entirely. So those are erased with our custom process and boards are then restored back to their HAL surface.

Instead of printing on the badge, we mirror-image the artwork and print on the acrylic backside instead.

Voila! Multiple upgrades with one single change.

The badge gets a glossy clearer artwork print, the LEDs shine through a lot brighter and the badge gets a multiple layer design. The base layer of HAL with silver finish is an ode to the steampunk era, with the acrylic mounted on top with digital grids and laser engraved logo dancing to the tunes of side-emitting RGBs finishing it off with a floating halo effect.

Putting Everything Together

Powered by 2 coin cells, the badge glows red eyes, blue hoodie LEDs and the floating ARCANUM logo in an RGB pattern.

When the badge is in darkness, it also unlocks the purple hoodie LEDs.