Prusa MK3 LED tower arms

prusaprinters

I liked lukas43199's design for the vertical light bars mounted to the printer, but I wanted them to be set further forward so that they would illuminate more of the print bed. In the end I wound up reworking a majority of the design, but his version was clearly the inspiration, and his design for mounting the LED strip is still present at the core of this design. A longer arm meant adding a 2nd mounting point for stability, and I went ahead and just chopped up the official MK3 Z-axis motor mount to make something that's (hopefully) just as strong a connection as the stock mounts they're sitting on. Obviously adding an extra layer on top of this mounting point is going to require slightly longer bolts to reach the Z-axis motors, I don't recall what size bolts I wound up using, but since the new part is about 8mm taller, choosing a bolt around 8mm taller than the one you remove makes sense. I added "channels" on the bottom of each arm for running the wires, and used hot glue to hold the light strips and wires to the arms. The LED strips go on the wider "angled" vertical area, while the vertical side that's directly perpendicular to the horizontal arm is intended as a "light bleed blocker", to prevent the LEDs from glaring when you look at the printer from the front. The arms should print "standing up" as provided, the channels underneath only bridge a small width (a separate channel for each wire), so they'll print without additional supports. I printed in white to try and maximize the reflectivity of the "light blocker" panel I added to front, but in the end I'm not sure it makes any noticeable difference, so feel free to print in whatever color you'd like. After mounting the LED bars, I ran the wires underneath the printer and zip tied them into the normal printer wire loom with a barrel jack coming off the back of the printer so that I could easily add/remove the power supply, as well as leaving room for easy expansion later if I had more 12V accessories to add. The LEDs are running off a separate 12v wall wart that's just on the same powerstrip as the printer, so I use that to turn the whole assembly on and off. If I ever upgrade the printer power supply, I'll wire the LEDs directly into that, but I didn't want to strain the stock supply with any extra power. I also made a "plug filler" to fill in the countersunk hole in the stock mount, just to give a little extra "backing" to the bottom of the bolt holes in the light bar mount. I recommend using this to avoid blowing out the bottom of the light bar when tightening the bolt down. Overall I'm quite happy with the design... about halfway through I did consider building a version that would slot into the extruded aluminum frame below the print bed, which would allow for more flexible placement of the light bars, as well as easily adding/removing them for transport, but ultimately I decided to go with the fixed mount design, and so far it's worked wonderfully, even during transport. The LED arms are close to the print bed, so they don't get in the way while moving it. The only extra thing to be aware of while transporting is the LED power supply, which can either be unplugged from the printer entirely, or simply wrapped around the top frame to keep it out of the way. Category: 3D Printer Accessories