Birdhouse With Lights Inside.

for school we need to make something with a 3d printer and an lasercutter, so i thought i can make a 3d printed birdhouse as a gift for my grandpa's birthday.

the housing of the birdhouse is made with a lasser cutter and the bird is made with the 3d printer. i want to make a light inside of the birdhouse so he can turn the lights on when it gets darker outside, because the live in a very dark area where no street lights are.

parts

• wood for the laser cutter
• Batteries
• Plastic voor the 3d printer
• LED
• Switch
• resistance

Tools

• 3d printer
• lasercutter
• soldering iron
• glue gun

the first thing i did was to print a birdhouse from triplex. I was looking on thingiverse for a birdhouse and i found it. The only thing that i had to do was to download it and had to put it on a USB so could set the file on the computer that was connected with the lasercutter. I had to adjust the settings of my file so it was ready to be printend. The picture was my end result. The first time i was trying to cut it it went a little bit wrong because the wood was bend it, so the laser couldn't go clean trough.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11021

The bird was also very simple. I downloaded a file on thingiverse and putted it on a USB so i could set it on te computer that is connected with the 3D printer. So it started to print and after 40 minutes it was done. The only thing i had to do was to get rit of al the support constructions. You have to do it very carefully because the legs of the bird are very thin and would easily break by the wrong move. The legs of my bird broke both but i could fix it with a little bit of superglue. I hope that they don't break again.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:76469

For the lighting of the birdhouse i had to connect 2 LED's to a nine volt battery, the nine volt was to much power. I had to put al little resistance between te lights so it didn't burn trough. In my project i also had to put a switch in it, so i can turn te lights off an on.

I bought :

• 2 white led's
• 1 resistance of 150 ohm
• 1 switch
• 1 nine volt battery
• some wires

I soldered everything in serie and it al worked with no problems. The only thing i could have done better was to buy a connecting piece for the nine volt battery and soldered it to the connecting piece because now i have soldered the circuit right on the nine volt battery. If the battery is empty i have to cut of the wires and solder it back on a new battery

For the switch i had to drill a little hole in the front of the birdhouse so it is easier to turn it on and off.

In this project there had to be a hinge in the object sow i made a hinge at the bottom so the battery can be switched a little bit easier. I bought a little hinge at the building store and with a glue gun i assembled it on the birdhouse.