Back to Cooling Fans

Well, the air pump cooling system I installed a while back really wasn't performing as well as I expected. Aaand in the process of adjusting it, I cracked off the fragile air pipe. So, I'm going to try out the stock cooling fans that came with the new hot end.

While I'm doing that, I'm adding a ring of LEDs (originally built as an accent light for cars, and therefore conveniently already designed for the same 12 volts my printer runs on).

It's pretty bright!

Maybe a little too bright. It washes out the camera. I'll see if I can adjust that later.

LED Accent Lamp

I have had this project in the back of my mind for a couple months, ever since seeing something similar pop up for $200. I picked up the electronics from China a while ago, but my ideas for the lamp body kept getting more and more complex. I finally decided to just knock this out over the weekend as a proof-of-concept.

I picked up a seven-foot length of trim with the cross-section I needed, and painted it white:

I then added three five-foot strips of RGB+WW (Red Green Blue + Warm White) LED strips and wired each strip to its own controller:

I shoved all the electronics in a section of vinyl drain pipe:

And then put the lamp in the corner.

Total cost was around $60.

There are a couple things I would do differently for a second version: the adhesive on the LED strips is pretty bad. I tacked the top and bottom of each strip in place with superglue, which is probably the only reason the LED strips have not fallen down already. Also, if I did this again, I would buy proper connectors for the LED strips rather than relying on my suspect soldering skills. Finally, using three controllers rather than one added $25 to the bill of materials, without adding a whole lot of functionality.

One interesting point: by setting one strip each to Red, Blue and Green, the light looks white, except at the edges.

But overall, I am very pleased without this project turned out!