Kossel LED Lights

thingiverse

These 12V SMD 5730 LEDs cast significant light on the print bed without adding mass to the Kossel hot end, thanks to their two rows of lights. Since you don't want to draw extra 5V power from either the MEGA's USB bus or its skimpy 5V regulator, stick with 12V LEDs that will run off your printer's 20A or 30A 12V supply. The slot for the LED strips will fit any strip that is 10mm wide, but if they aren't 5730's, they'll emit less light. The strip LEDs come with self-adhesive backing, but I don't peel it off; instead, I just slide them into the slots and wire them up. Be sure to watch the polarity of the LEDs when soldering them. I join two banks of LEDs together - one at the base of the X and Y towers - but you probably shouldn't put them on the Z tower since they would shine into your eyes. You can power the LEDs right at the 12V input screw terminals on the RAMPS 1.4 PCB or wire them up to the FAN terminals, D9, if you're not using a fan. If you wire them to D9, you can control their brightness with GCODE commands, but note that they will slightly flicker due to PWM. If this bothers you, just wire them straight to 12V. I have mine wired to D9 and set to come on at the start of the hot end heating phase and turn off at print completion. In Slic3r, I have start and end GCODEs set up as follows: Start GCODE: M106 S255; LED lights ON; End GCODE: M107; LED lights OFF. Print Settings: Printer: Kossel; Rafts: Doesn't Matter; Supports: No; Resolution: 0.3mm; Infill: 25%; Notes: The LEDs will get warm enough to make PLA slightly pliable but won't do any damage. I've printed for a couple hundred hours with these LEDs on and they work fine with PLA.