Northern lights (kind of)

thingiverse

This is a reproduction of the northern lights, not an extremely accurate one obviously. The prints were made with black and natural PLA (clear may have worked better for the fins but natural worked fine too). I then installed 14 five-millimeter LEDs which produce the lighting effect. A TLC5940NT was used to control the LEDs, connected to an Arduino Uno. This allowed each LED's brightness to be varied individually. There are holes in the base piece for mounting the Arduino and copper strip board with the TLC5940 on it. They're designed for M3 six-millimeter long screws. Everything can be powered using a USB cable or the DC jack on the Arduino. None of the LEDs draw more than twenty milliamps, so power consumption is not an issue. The lights part connects to the base by clipping in. There are small dimples in the slots on one side of the base. You may need to trim these back a bit to ensure the parts fit together properly but this is easy to do. The case has holes to allow light out in a star-like pattern. They sort of twinkle as the lights change or you walk past it. Naturally, it looks much better in the dark! https://youtu.be/m-pusYmGamA I made a small modification after printing and before uploading that the fins now have a fillet. This is just to give them a little extra strength. Print Settings Printer Brand: Ultimaker Printer: Ultimaker 2 Rafts: No Supports: No Resolution: .1mm Infill: 20% Notes: I used a brim on all the parts. I printed the case in cover in the orientation shown and as you would expect the surface on the fillets was poor. I deemed it acceptable as this will mostly be used in the dark. For the lights part, I changed from black to natural material after 4.2mm.