DIY Marvel (and Other!) USB LED Light Box

In this Instructable we will create a 3D printed Marvel USB LED light that you can plug to your computer or a generic 5v plug adapter. While it might not light your workdesk it will act as a nice decorative piece and could act as a nightlight. Although I am using the Marvel logo instructions can be transferred over to any SVG with text, including names :)

This Instructable will focus more on the design of the logo and the case that can be 3D printed - the logo multi-colour and case any colour you want. Tinkercad is my preferred tool for this as you might have seen from one of my previous Instructables which has links to some getting started tutorials and additional tutorials to get you creating your own designs.

You will need a computer with internet access for Tinkercad and a 3D printer to print the models. If you do not have a 3D printer ask a friend or check out your local Makerspace. I only have a single extruder printer so the model is designed with this in mind (i.e. I pause the printer to change colour - Step 2) instead of dual colour printers.

For constructing the USB LED light I will let you find your favourite from https://www.instructables.com/howto/usb+led/ as electronics is not my strongest skillset. I really like this one although I ended up using a variation of this one and this instead, with a 56omh resistor since the computer and most phone adaptors provide 5v. In terms of materials I have tried to keep the cost as low as possible and I had all of the items so didn't purchase anything.

 Other materials needed are:

• 56omh resistor
• Used thrown away USB cable (easiest)
• 5 LEDs (white)
• Soldering iron and solder
• Red (solid) and white (translucent) filament
• Hot glue gun & glue

Optional

• kitchen foil

Log in to Tinkercad and create a new design. Best to give it a sensible name at this stage.

Import the Marvel logo into Tinkercad - we are using the one on Wikipedia which is an image supplied as SVG that Tinkercad understands.

Click the Import button on top right corner and Import Shapes dialog will be displayed. In here click the Import from URL option and paste the file link (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Marvel_Logo.svg) in the box and click Import. As you can see from this screen you can also import a file that is local on your computer if that is the case

Before the file is imported we can select more refined dimensions as I have done (see image). So we are importing a shape that is 100mm wide and 40mm in length - you of course are free to make it bigger/smaller if you prefer. Originally I though to have a bigger sized model but this proved more manageable in printing times for this Instructable but planning to eventually printer one 150mmx60mm size.

Once you click import it will take a few seconds for Tinkercad to process and import the logo as a 3D shape. You will notice the resulting shape is a rectangular prism (had to look that one up!) that has these dimensions in the order that Tinkercad presents them:

1. Width (W) = 100mm
2. Length (L) = 40mm (changed this from 40.25)
3. Height (H) = 10mm

NOTE: The above are given in order Tinkercad presents them. Since other steps below refer to these dimensions we will simply use L, W or H to indicate which we are referring to. While H might be too big we can adjust later if needed but for now it is a good value to work with.

As you can see you kind of end of with a negative stencil which will need a bit more modification to make it work as we desire. Add a box to the workplane from the basic shapes and adjust the dimensions to make them equal our L and W with only half H (5mm in my case). At this point you can change the colours of the shapes in Tinkercad to make it resemble that actual logo colours.

Before exporting the final model the two shapes need to be combined into one. Select Align and make sure that W and L are aligned and also worth double checking the bottom is aligned. Click Group and this will make one object that can be exported by clicking Export and saving the file as STL. The buttons are shown together in the image for brevity.

I use Cura for slicing and have an Ender 3 Pro printer and know how it behaves and changing the filament mid-print. I am hoping you will know what to do with your printer also so will not go into details.

My first attempt of printing was not that great since it had layers of infill in both colours which kind of messed the end result. Trial and error showed that 100% infill is best - you might want to scale down the height (H) / Z axis - I settled on a scaled Z axis to 4mm giving us 2mm for each colour. To scale the Z make sure Uniform Scaling is not selected.

The most important bit in this step is the changing of colours and making sure the filament change happens at the appropriate height/layer and smoothly. The key setting is to pause the printer at the specific layer and in Cure that is in:

Extensions -> Post Processing -> Modify G-code

This will open the Post Processing Scripts dialog box and in here you click Add a script button. My settings are shown in the image providing a starting point to you - they do the job though can probably be refined! Remember that these settings are with the above in mind i.e. the height of model being printed is 4mm. NOTE: this step also relies on the printer being able to understand the pause command and actually stopping!

I have a single nozzle printer and it can only do one colour at the time so if you have a multi-colour printer I will leave you to explore and change the model to suit your printer. If you are using a different slicer I assume you will know where these settings are to pause the print for filament change. As you can see final print looks very good if I say so myself! One last thing to say here is; if you don't have translucent filament but have white you might need to adjust the height for the bottom layer in Tinkercad before exporting (we need that layer to let out some light!).

The rest of the instruction, especially the ones to create the box, are a bit of freestyle as I have yet to find a streamlined way of doing it. I have recently been looking into 'Vase mode' 3D printing and I will give instructions for that however this is very printer and printer configuration dependent. It is not necessary to have a 3D printed box either so feel free to use whatever you can or want, including cardboard! I just wanted to try out the vase mode and 3D printing.

After having tried vase mode a few years ago and getting poor results (my fault entirely - didn't read the manual!) had put this off for a while. I also started with funnel (for the box similar to this) which is probably something not easy to print in vase mode. Anyway while thinking of alternatives settled on having one box with bottom printed as the outer layer. A second smaller box that can go inside the outer box. The second box is also broken down in two parts - 1) that can act as a holder for the LEDs to solder and glue them on and hide the cabling, 2) one bracket that can hold the logo/name print so that when pushed in does not go all the way to the bottom, can allow for better gluing too if required. See the photos which hopefully present this information better.

Check out the linked Instructable to above for Vase mode if you have not done so already. Since that one is from 2018 you might be able to find something else that is more detailed and suits your learning style i.e. like a video. I just wanted to briefly show (in photos) my settings because they relate to the next step. I am using an Ender 2 Pro with 0.4mm nozzle, turn on vase mode - in Cura this is under:

Special Modes -> Spiralize Outer Contour

• Surface mode there is two options we use: Both - means you get a bottom layer, Surface you don't.
• Under Quality I change the Line Width to 0.8mm (double of Nozzle) and Layer Height to 0.25mm (to slightly speed things up!).
• Under Speed change Print Speed to 20mm/s or just less then half, Cura will adjust other settings for this group.
• Change the Printing Temperature to 220 degrees Celsius which is under Material.
• And as a last step disable cooling by unticking Enable Print Cooling check box under Cooling

Please note these settings work for the combination of material and printer I have and took a bit of tweaking before I settled on them. I am sure I can adjust further but they get a good result for what I want currently.

It is now time to pop in your favourite filament in the printer and print a box of some sorts in vase mode, preferably something you can find some use afterwards. We need a sample print to check the above settings and take some measurements. My print was fairly 'precise' although my measurement tool only gives a general idea as you can see :)

For this step we will have to head back to Tinkercad and open the correct design i.e. one that you have been working on for this. You could create a new design but this way we have everything in one workplane and if we adjust one part we can quickly adjust the others too. Note also that in this step I will go through things briefly as I am assuming you did the Tinkercad tutorials and have a better idea of how to use it.

Before going any further it's a good idea to print a sample (as above) to check how your printer behaves and take measurements. You can just assume that it will be the same as your setting for Line Width set above i.e. 0.8mm - although it might not be. My printer with current settings does around that so next few lines will assume the same but you should adjust for your actual measurements. As a reminder we started with a logo/name with these dimensions:

1. Width (W) = 100mm
2. Length (L) = 40mm
3. Height (H) = 10mm

We can work with these in mind and adjust to suit. Also if you recall we reduced H before we printed. The main reason for keeping this at 10mm is we can adjust in Cura in case top filament is not solid in leaks light through. I find it easier that way.

Outer box

Drag a Box from the Basic Shapes in Tinkercad. Change the dimensions taking into account the 0.8mm width of each side for the vase mode. So add 1.6mm (0.8 x2) to W and L, for the height (H) of the box I chose 40mm although you can make it more/less but no less then H = 30mm.

Next drag a Cylinder (Hole, not Solid) to the workplane and change the dimensions to W = 5, L = 5 and H = 50 (H needs to be bigger than the box H). This is to allow for the USB wire to go through. Select both box and cylinder, align and group making one object that can be exported and printed. Go ahead and print this in Vase mode with Surface Mode option set to both giving us a hollow box as shown. You can also measure and double check that they are what you expect before proceeding. If you have already printed the logo in Step 2 an easy way of doing this is by placing that in the box as shown in the photo.

LED Holder/Shim

The next part for the box is the LED holder/shim - I will call it a shim here. This is easy as in theory it should be exactly the same size as the logo i.e. W = 100 and L = 40 which actually worked for my tests but find it ever so slightly tight so maybe reduce this by a tiny fraction 0.3mm (0.5 was too much although its your choice). So dimensions for this should be W = 99.70, L = 39.70 and H = 10.

Carry out similar steps to above i.e. drag a box and adjust dimensions to get desired results. Depending how many LEDs you want and how big your box is make that they are spread evenly. I did mine in a row but it is up to you as long as you can easily wire and solder them. So for a row drag a hole cylinder again and adjust the dimensions similar as above (H can be less if you want). Move it next to the shim on the left and side leaving a bit of space press Ctrl + D to duplicate it and more that one to the right a distance apart which is the distance you would like the LEDs to be apart. If you continue to duplicate the cylinder they will now be apart in a uniform way. Duplicate until you reach the end of the shim or as close as. Select and group these making them one object and centre align them with the shim on both W and L as well as grouping them too. You can now download this and print it in Vase mode the same as you did above i.e. resulting into a hollow box.

Bracket (inside tube)

By now you should have a good idea what we are going to do next :) The next part baffled me a bit but decided to let it go. In theory this should work the same way as Outer box and LED shim but it didn't so while you would expect the same dimensions as the shim to work, it will be too big for the box (or it was for me). To rectify this I had to reduce both W and L by 1mm which came our great. So with one more box dragged to Workplane make its dimensions W = 99 and L = 39 or something that works for your box if you are following along with your own dimensions (i.e. reduce by 1mm as mentioned).

For the bracket height we need to measure / approximate the bottom layer of outer box so that we can deduce how tall the bracket should be once we take everything into account. Using my not very precise callipers I figured that my boxes are generally printing with a 1mm bottom layer which sounds about right since we can also look at the Cura settings - under Top/Bottom heading you will see the value 4 for Bottom Layers. This together with a layer height of 0.25mm gives us 1mm or you can just look at the Bottom Thickness in Cura that says 0.95mm which it will be rounded to the whole number giving us the same result :)

Anyway, together all of this: box bottom layer (1mm) + shim (10mm) + logo (4mm) gives us 15mm. If you subtract this from the box height of 40mm then you get 25mm which is the height of the bracket. Although height wise 3D printers seem to be better when printing in vase mode some testing with this provide some more refinements.

And finally export and print the file in vase mode as before but this time we need to print without the bottom layer i.e. just the surface / sides. In Cure this setting is under Special Modes => Surface Mode and by selecting Surface instead of Both which we have been doing up to this point.

A note on filament colour; I have some silver filament with silk finish which helped act as reflecting surface inside the box to make it brighter. If you do not have this type or similar filament then some kitchen foil might help, in which case it should be taken into account when setting dimensions. So if you were wondering what that was there for wonder no more :)

That was a long step but hopefully has given everything in detail to allow you to work on your boxes with you own printer.

I am hoping if you have reached this stage you know exactly what goes where and how this fits together considering that most was explained in Step 3 also. I have given links on introduction that show you about connecting LEDs and I will let you explore them for yourself. The photos show some of the steps for my light boxes to help you.

One important bit to remember is to run the cable thought the box before you start soldering, which is very crucial as once you start soldering then it will not be possible to run this through unless you have made the hole bigger in the previous step - although you can still make that bigger after. Additionally before assembling everything remember to test that the LEDs light so that you don't glue everything together only to find that there is a loose wire! The Vase mode seems to work very well and my prints came out really well that they kind of snapped in and didn't require gluing. Only after dropping one I decided to glue them (it broke slightly but hardly noticeable - this might be a drawback for doing the box in vase mode although if you have them you could try with a wider nozzle e.g. 0.8mm to make them sturdier.

After all that admire your work and show it to your friends. If like me you ended up with some extra bits that don't quiet fit together go ahead and adjust so you can print parts that fit to make something as a gift to your family or friends.

If there are any improvements that you are already thinking to make to this share them in the comments if you like. I thought of some myself but decided to stick to the idea I had at the start mainly because I wanted to expand my skills but also keep cost as low as possible. For example you can use LED strip lights (which I plan to do) instead of soldering single LEDs although needs redesigning the inside box. You can make a laser cut box and if you have access to a lasercutter you could actually cut the svg file in acrylic which with a bit of glue can give similar effect. I am sure there are others that I haven't thought but since the Instructable is now very long I will conclude here. If you have been following along you should now have a really nice light for use anywhere you fancy, well done!

Let me know what you think and if you like this Instructable or have any comments.