Cool LED Customizable Fixture

Hello, I'm Youjia He, currently attending Piedmont Hills High School as a Junior.

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Today I'll be walking through how to make this cool LED light fixture that I sometimes see sold on Amazon and other retail stores, an example being the picture above (I googled this image). This is something that is perfect as a gift to a friend, teacher, or any other individual you want to show appreciation for.

3D printed parts:

1. Fusion 360
2. Creality Slicer
3. Ender-3 Max Neo Printer
4. White PLA filament

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Electronics:

1. PKCELL 9V battery
2. Positive/negative wires
3. LED strip
4. On/Off switch
5. Soldering setup (soldering iron, sponge, solder, ventilator)

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Display:

1. Clear acrylic sheet
2. Adobe Illustrator
3. Laser engraver (you can go to a Makerspace for this heavy machinery)

Above, I've made a video that goes in detail on how I created the CAD models for the fixture.

If you feel like the video is hard to follow along, I've also attached PDFs below of the drawings that I made of the CAD models. They have detailed dimensions so if you would like to go at your own pace, there is that option as well.

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If you don't want to go through the trouble of modeling it yourself, I've attached the .f3d files so that you can go straight to the next step.

Save the CAD file by going to the top left: File > Export > STL Files (.stl)

That file is what you will upload into your slicer software (I used Creality Slicer) that is compatible with your 3D printer (my printer is Ender-3 Max Neo).

Above is an LED fixture that I've already completed. You can see that I put all the electrical components inside the 3D printed body. Since soldering is hard for me already, I couldn't film and do it at the same time. Thus, the soldering steps I will illustrate.

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Make sure that you are taking the necessary safety precautions and setting up your soldering station correctly. Here is an Instructable that will walk you through a station set up.

Here is a blog to walk you through the basics of soldering.

First, you should have your battery out and a piece that connects the positive and negative wires to the battery.

Cut the black wire in half.

Take out the on/off switch and solder the two black wires to the metal part of it. It does not matter which wire goes on which protrusion, the order doesn't matter.

Take out an LED strip with the color that you want and solder the red and black wires to the copper parts of the LED.

THE ORDER DOES MATTER THIS TIME so make sure to check the label on the copper parts (+ or - to indicate wire charge) to make sure to solder the correct wire to the LED.

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(I also recommend laser cutting out a piece of acrylic [3 inches by .134 inches] and glue the LED on it so that it'll fit snuggly into the 3D printed body)

Now put all the components into the 3D printed body. Then plug the in the battery as well.

Now we're going to take the 3D printed bottom and assembly it all together.

I used Adobe Illustrator to design the laser engraving for the acrylic sheet. My school provides an educational access to this software, so try to ask your school about it too! It is a powerful tool as well. (Here is a video that walks through the basics of using Illustrator)

To design it, I searched some images on Google and downloaded it. Then I placed it in Illustrator and used "Image Trace" (here is video 1 and video 2 explaining what it is and how to use it). Basically, it can be used to change a jpg image into a vector based design that makes it easier to edit the design.

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Make sure the acrylic you are using is 0.13 inches thick!

Also, you must keep your design black and white, because that is how the laser will read your design. You can choose a colorful image and then use image trace to convert it to black and white.

Then, in order to tell the laser to cut through the material, you must draw out the shape you want to cut (I drew a rectangle in the image above) in red and the line width must be 0.001 inches.

Lastly, make sure you change the dimensions of your canvas to the size of your laser cutter so that you'll save yourself from pain and suffering later on.

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Then, save it as pdf and upload it into the Universal Laser Systems (ULS)

Hope you liked this Instructable! I tried my best to make it clear and concise.

Please let me know if you also recreate this project, I would love seeing them :)