Here’s a good weekend project for RepRap 3D printer owners, specifically owners of a Prusa i3 with an acrylic frame. If you’ve seen some of these newer 3D printers outfitted with slick blue lights and have gotten a little jealous, Aldric Negrier on Instructables has some detailed instructions for you so that your Prusa i3 3D printer can light up like the best.
The actual process of lighting your printer up is pretty much what you’d expect. You’ll need a glue gun, at least 50 cm of RGB LED lights, an infrared LED controller (maybe this one will work?), a soldering gun, and some extra wire. After gathering your supplies, you precisely measure out your LED strip to fold around the frame of your printer and glue it in place. Next, you extend the wires tangling from your LED strip (corresponding to RGB and Power) by soldering them to your excess wires. The RGB extensions are then soldered to the IR receiver of your LED controller and the power wire is soldered to the power unit on your printer; that way, you won’t have to power the lights separately.
If all goes well, you should have something that looks like this:
Not a difficult project at all and, now that I think of it, I think that this could work for most printers and most things. This weekend, I’ll be gluing some lights to my own printer and probably to my bearded dragon, as well. Happy weekend dance party, everyone!
