Aquila LED lighting without a buck converter (applies to many other printers)

thingiverse

Just got my new Voxelab Aquila and just had to have LED lighting installed. I initially installed a 12V strip of 5050 LEDS, but had to use a seperate power supply as the Aquila has no 12 V supply on board. I considered installing a buck converter to reduce the onboard 24 V supply to 12 V but that involved finding a place for the converter and extra wiring. Then I thought ..why not hook two LED strips in series to operate on 24 V? 18 LED's fit perfectly so the strip was cut into two 9 LED strips, one strip was reversed and soldered as shown (note the picture showing the joining of the strips). I did a test setup and it worked perfectly. Simple, no converter and lots of light. I chose to install my LED strips on the back of the top rail so the LED's wouldn't blind me and just illuminate the bed. Although I did this on an Aquila, it will obviously work on any printer with a 24 V supply. The rails are slotted for the strips, so don't remove the adhesive backing or they will be hard to slide into the rails. The rails are for standard "X" aluminum extrusions. I worked out the current draw at 24 V for 18 LED's and it's approximately 80mA. Miniscule, so you don't need heavy wire. 28 ga. or larger is fine (There a large safety factor even in 28 ga). i could wish for a little neater wiring layout, but that may come in time.