Mini Flicker LED Lantern on Barrel, Crate, etc

thingiverse

I conceived an idea to incorporate lights into the interior of my pirate ship model, but I wanted them to be distinct from the ship itself. So, I modified a barrel and crate to accommodate one of those LED earrings. I cut off the top of the earring and soldered on a 3mm flicker LED. The LED serves as the glass of the lantern. To achieve an old-glass appearance and diffuse the light, I used sandpaper to scuff up the plastic on the LED. To turn it on, simply press down on the top of the lantern. Turning it off is as simple as pulling the lantern up off the crate/barrel a tiny bit. This lantern can be placed on any object with a height of about 16.5-17mm, such as a dresser, table, or desk. It could also work on taller objects with some modifications to the design. The earring could drop into a pocket from the top, but you would have to modify the base of the lantern to cover up the larger hole. Alternatively, you could make a riser to put under the earring and still insert the larger part from the bottom, leaving the smaller hole on top. I printed the lanterns on my Elegoo Mars at .02mm layer resolution and the barrel and crate at .05mm layer resolution. You could probably print the barrel and crate on an FDM printer, but the lantern would most likely require an SLA printer. To modify the LED earring, use wire cutters to snip off the legs of the earring and then trim around the earring base to make it smaller. Leave the center post in place, which serves as the negative contact. The outer housing of the earring is the positive contact. After trimming the earring base down to size (3mm), solder the negative lead of the flicker LED to the center post and the positive lead to the earring base. You can use a flexible sanding disc on a Dremel for additional trimming of the LED base if needed.