Led holder

Something I made about 3 weeks ago, but had some problems with the printer so forgot to post for whoever might be interested.

It is a holder for three 5mm leds.
It clips on the printer, exactly in front of the extruder head, right behind the sticker "Do not touch".
The leds are angled by 10 degrees towards the extruder nozzle and 20 degrees to each other.
I would propose using diffusion leds in order to get evenly spread light(I haven't sadly ).
Mounts firmly by clipping on the plastic above it.
Has a hole for the wires to come out on the left hand side, very close to where the cable bundle of the printer ends, so very easy to get the power supply through there.
Is rather discreet.
I printed mine using 0.2mm layers.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:176238

 

Thanks, Chris. I will print it as soon as my parts arrive from ROBO. Next Friday, I'm told. Yep. They said it and FedEx said it and I'm hopeful. Looks like a nice way to add some light...
Dean

 

Dude that's awesome!!! I'll be printing this next as soon as my current print finishes... SO tired of using a flashlight to check on the print!!!!!!

 

Thanks guys.

Once again, I printed at .2 layer height. The top part fits nice and tight on the holder. Not sure if it would fit right if printed using different layer height.

 

I printed it at .3 and the holder part printed OK. The Cap tho, didn't slice or print correctly. I only got half of it to print for some reason... I dunno if that's an issue with the model or Slic3r... In Repetier it's showing the red X in the Mesh column tho on import / drop. See the attached photos of how my print turned out. The holder is fine, the cap tho, notsomuch...





Ideas?

 

Hi Matt,

I checked the cap file. There was a line that was not needed but did not affect the result.

Have removed it and reuploaded the file to thingiverse. Both mesh and collision come up with the green check on repetier.

I don't see why it would only print half. Though from your pictures and even though the cap is upside down and cant see the ridges, it seems complete.

About them not fitting, I can't say I'm surprised, since you printed in .3 layer resolution.
Haven't tried in .3 myself(I printed in .2 as mentioned earlier) and the fit is quite tight, as it's supposed to be in order to prevent it from coming off(indeed it has never come loose since when I installed it).

Download it again and slice it, and if it still gives you any probs I can upload here the gCode.

 

Downloaded and loaded into Repetier. Mesh checks out this time. My other print just finished a few minutes ago so I'll print the fixed cap now and see how that goes! Thanks for the quick fix.

 

Oh yeah... and it wasn't that the cap was upside down... it was a solid block!

 

Prints done... MUCH better! Printed the cap at .2 and fit is a little tight and required a tiny bit of trimming with the ol' Swiss Army Knife... but it fits great! I'll wire up the LEDs during the next print and wire 'er up once that's done.

Now... where did I put those ultrabright white LEDs...

 

Great! Snap a couple of pictures when you're done.

I would suggest diffusion ultrabright leds. I had standard high bright around and couldn't wait to assemble it, so I thought I'd use those and then replace.

Can't be bothered to change them now...

 

Looks great, I might use this one instead of the LED ring i have.

 

Turns out the only 5mm LEDs I had on hand were red, green, and yellow... so, I used yellow. Wired 'em up in series and will hook up directly to the power supply tomorrow. I touched the leads to it for now, just to make sure they worked, and it's not nearly as bright as my flashlight, and I'd far rather have white, but also... more interested in getting something on and working for now, and will reprint and do it again if I think I have to. The yellow might bug the crap outta me, I'll just have to see. It's not worth the 40 mile round trip into town tho for the closest radio shack (I'm not driving 100 miles round trip to Fry's!!!) to get other LEDs tho. I've got a buttload of 3mm LEDs, but also mostly in red, yellow, and green. I've got a harbor freight flashlight I could gut to harvest some whites, but those are all 3mm too. I CA glued mine all togheter. The cap just wasn't sticking together well enough with my print for me to trust the vibration it'd have to live through to not glue it... plus I glued the LEDs in, so figured it was a complete unit at that point one way or another anyway. LOL I'll snap a shot of it working tomorrow after I get it wired to power...

 

Did you have to use glue on the 5mm leds you had or did you use it to stabilise 3mm ones?

Just curious as on my test prints the 5mm leds fit very tight. You actually have to push them in place.
In addition I soldered the two poles together withougt using wire as they're so close together, so that provides even more resistance.

I would like to have to feedback from someone else too regarding the 2 pieces not fitting together "out of the box".
Mark had to grind them and that is why they are loose and had to glue them. I just had to push a bit hard to clip them together and that's it. I know every printer is not the same. I'll try on mine again if I get the new sliders I've ordered, today.

Oh, one more thing. Printed using PLA. Never had a chance to print using ABS yet. So since I have no experience with ABS yet at all, I don't know if it would make any difference.

 

I CA glued the 5mm LEDs in as I had a bit of boogers I cleaned out with my swiss army knifes leather punch tool... that probably opened up the gap enough that they were too lose to just be a press fit. Remember I printed the holder at .3 so was outside the specs of your design. I had to trim the cover a small amount as well as it was bowing out when put on, again likely because of the difference with the two parts being printed at .3 and .2 not fitting together correctly... a simple push down with the chisel on the side nipped just enough off that it then fit together 95% correctly... and the CA solved the rest of the remaining bow... even tho I nearly glued myself to it in the process. LOL All my clamps are out in the shop and didn't want to go get one. {shrug}

When/if I reprint it later I'll do both halves at .2. I printed mine with PLA as well. I don't know if I'd want to use PLA for the part tho, as the opacity of the PLA would help with diffusion somewhat as well. When I soldered mine in, I do so in a series configuration ( + - + - + - ) so I just had to run the wire to the two ends of the chain. Positive at the near side, negative at the far... This was I also don't have to use a resistor on them with the 12v power supply. I'm overdriving the LEDs a bit, but they should live long enough still with being 1/4w at 12v and that long of a line of wire. I didn't measure the specific resistance, but with the 3 LEDs (I'd rather have had 4 with 12v) it should be fine... plus, I couldn't (at least easily) find my Magna Visor magnifying glass to find the right resistor as it was out in the shop and it's raining here in Texas right now... (Texas rain, BTW, is like Tropical rain, where one can't see more than 50 feet... we got 14" in 24 hours and EVERYTHING is flooded!!!) So I'm going a bit ghetto with my implementation for this initial round. I fully intend to replace it once I get the correct LEDs on hand and will likely add the resistor at that time once I measure the resistance in the wire and can use the correct spec one. I'll likely just add an on/off switch to the side of it as well with a micro push on/off switch, rather than go with a dimmer / variable resistor like Tesseract did as that would also be easy to drill a small hole for and add into the housing.

 

I went for the on/off switch+potentiometer myself. I'm planning to make a mounting bracket for them that will clip on the right front corner of the printer, not interfering with the case for them. Will post it here when I do.

Remember, if you place the switch on the actual led holder, you cant easily switch on/off while printing.

If you want the original sketchup files in order to edit them to fit your switch, just let me know.

My sliders were delivered a while ago(not here), so off to pick them up and hopefully have a working printer in a few hours...

 

I had a doc appointment I'd forgotten about this am... so swung by Radio Shack on the way home and picked up a few white Hi Intensity LEDs... I'll reprint the unit tonight at .2 (or maybe .1) and give assembly another try...

 

Wow, MUCH better!!!

You can see the on/off switch I installed on the right side (as well as the belt tightener in the background for the X axis)... I used 3 High Intensity (7kmcd 25mA) 3.3v LEDs,, the switch, and a 100Ohm resistor. Wired direct into the 12v power supply through the existing wiring for the print head.

Great design Kera!

Now to put that flashlight AWAY! Don't need you NO MORE!

 

Matt, where in the wiring harness did you tie in for power? Or did you run a wire back to the power supply?

 

I ran back to the power supply.

 

Thanks. I'm starting to get a sore on the inside of my lip from holding a penlight with my mouth while I type commands and watch results.