Zotskappen LED light cube

thingiverse

It's almost time for Carnival (Mardi Gras) and it seemed like a great idea to create a lamp featuring the logo of our club. This is how I did it, and you can follow my steps to make your own. I used a design from Thingiverse that has a super simple click-together system, which works amazingly well. The design can be found here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3373014 Next, I loaded the design into Tinkercad and removed the top layer so I had a smooth surface to work on, while keeping the nice click system on the bottom. I also modified the bottom of the tiles by removing the side markers that indicate which part goes where. Since my design didn't need those markers, I made the bottom smooth. Then, I downloaded the logo of our Carnival club (Mardi Gras) and removed all the colors in Paint so only the logo in black remained. This was a bit challenging; it took me over two hours to achieve this on this particular logo. I saved the logo as a PNG file, which could also have been done using a JPG format. I converted the image to an SVG file using this website: https://image.online-convert.com/convert-to-svg. I didn't change any settings during the process. After that, I loaded the SVG into Tinkercad and added text around the logo, featuring our club's name and hometown. I scaled it to the right size and made it 1 mm high, with a height of 5 mm so it would become the new top layer of the cube tiles. I thought we needed a bit more, so I added two stars on each side of the cube. The reason for this was to add some light inside the box and give it a nicer lighting effect. To achieve this, I added the stars. The real changes to the design are relatively minor and almost invisible. I created a post that is 60 mm high and has a diameter of 25 mm. Around this post, I glued a 50 cm flexible LED strip. The strips I used already have a sticky backing, so wrapping them around was a breeze. The LED strips were purchased here: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/USB-Powered-DC-5V-LED-Strip-light-2835-RGB-White-Warm-White-Waterproof-Tape-LED-Lamp/32820847212.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4dPa6DhO They come with a remote control and are virtually colorless. On one of the tiles, I made a small hole in the right-hand corner to guide the LED light cable through. When all the printing is complete, I take one tile (not the one with the hole) and glue the 60 mm post in the middle of the tile on the inside using PVC glue. After that, I carefully push the sides together, and voila! The cube with lights and club logo is ready. However, it's not quite there yet because it's currently sitting on one side of the table, which isn't what we want. So, I designed a small cube holder where it fits nicely. While it may not be a masterpiece, it will do for what I wanted. Feel free to remove the logo from the sides of the cube tiles and add your own design so you can create your own cube light. All printing was done without supports, rafts, or brims and at a resolution of 0.2 mm. I used white PLA as the base color, which is best for letting light through. On top, I used simple black PLA, but some fancier colors would be nice too. I originally made the cube with Extrafill Galaxy Vertigo and it turned out nicely. You'll need 5 cube tiles without holes and all other files you need 1. The total printing time at 100% speed will be approximately 16 hours. The picture of the cube doesn't look very smooth, but when lit up, it's actually quite nice.