Minecraft Lamps

My daughter decided she wanted a Minecraft birthday party. As part of the theme we are placing Ore Lamps around the house. So, I 3D printed several, wired them with LEDs and lined them with plastic defusers. Just thought I would share.

I downloaded to sets of files from Thingiverse which the nice people who created them were kind enough to share. They can be found here and here. One set has the sides and base of the cube, while the other had a base which can accommodate regular AA batteries.

Printing was the easy part. Once done, I needed to place diffusers inside to spread the light. [Disclaimer, don't do what I first did. At first, I realized the acrylic I had was coated with a protective sleeve which is normally supposed to be removed. It made a good diffuser so I decided to cut and glue them inside the the cube. However, after I did that on one of the cubes, I realized the glue was only connected to the sleeve, not the acrylic. This meant the acrylic could slide out of the cube at any time if the sleeve started to separate. Afterwards, I switched tactics.]

I cut the acrylic into 5 squares for each cube. I removed the protective sleeves. The acrylic is see through. So I took course sand paper and scratched it up really good.. This made an excellent diffuser.

I then attached a AA battery holder with preinstalled wires to the bottom of the base unit. I soldered a blue and/or gold LED on the top end.

Once the batteries were installed and the LEDs wired, I painted two of the cubes. After the cubes were painted I installed the diffusers.

With a room full of 8-year-olds it is likely the lamps would not last long without being attached somehow to something. So, I attached neodymium magnets both to the base and the cube. I messed up on the polarities on a few, but for the most part I got them to align. The cubes now stay solidly on the base. I twisted them sideways so they appear to be on rocks and the bases do not give the false impression they are part of the ore. After all, in Minecraft its supposed to be a cube made of squares, not rectangles.