Q: How can you store 23 lights on your desk without them occasionally becoming dominos?
A: 3D printed holder of course.
I don’t own a 3D printer (I sent my file to Treatstock) and i’ve never designed any print before this so i’m sure this could be done way better but it was fun to learn. The AAA size lights came out a bit tight but all the rest fit perfect. I added clip “grooves” on some to support deep carry clips or face up/down. They are in deep enough I can pick up the whole thing 45 degrees and nothing comes out. I chose “translucent red” just to see how well light could shine through it in case I wanted to make a fancy version 2 or see if I left a light on. It’s not really translucent at all it just looks like flaked red which is fine.
It could have been flat with just sunken holes but I feel like it would look more like a block of wood that way? idk
I also considered trying to countersink a few holes to allow forward clickies to stand but I decided that could be done with a drill after plus I have very few small fwd clickies.
I beveled the outside of the holes but I couldn’t figure out how to easily bevel the inside diameter. If I didn’t go with the raised design I would have for sure done this.
It may be a bit dense/crowded?
It might be cool to have them be smaller but modular and have puzzle piece type attachments for separate trays 18650/21700, AA/16340, AAA, etc.
FYI, this was $24.63 shipped and that’s with this weird color and me probably creating the most complex/not-optimized print.
Working with wood you would have to like chisel out the clip slots or forego that functionality. IMO having them fit tight in the holes and creating clip slots was worth it.
@contactcr Very nice! What design software did you use?
My “mod” today is inspired from my entry in this year’s Old Lumens contest. While that touch lamp is cool, it’s really not feasible for my kids to use and it’s not very reproducible.
So I designed a new housing with Fusion360 and printed it on my 3D printer using PETG (after a couple revisions to get all the dimensions just right). I designed a simple circuit board in Eagle and sent it off to Oshpark using their After Dark service. I’m also using an off-the-shelf TP4056 charging board with protection features.
Put that together and I’ve got a nice compact very simple on/off touch lamp with built in charging.
Very Nice work ‘contactcr’. I love watching and learning from you guys
Wish I understood the details of your work on the driver. I like the flashlight stand
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Nice light ‘gchart’ :+1:
Could you tell me what 3D Printer you have ?
Also, I gave up on Fusion 360 after Autodesk killed it for cnc use.
I have FreeCad installed but I have not played with it yet.
Do you have any suggestions for a free cad software for a 3D printer ?
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Thanks CNCman! Besides the basic TinkerCAD, the only CAD software I’ve used is Fusion360. It’s too bad they’re locking out some features. Thankfully it still does everything I need in the Free version.
I’m not really familiar with it’s usage for CNC. I know they originally announced the removal of several features, but then on Sept 25th they back tracked on that and decided to keep STEP export. I know that’s one of the CNC-related features, right?
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Yes, the removal of STEP file export was a shot over the bow warning that it will be permanently removed in the future. So after a year of watching Youtube videos and practicing drawing models and i was just starting programming 3D models, Autodesk did what i was afraid they might do and kill it. The STEP export will be removed in the future, so i deleted it and loaded Freecad.
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Here’s the files for 3D printing/editing of my design. I modified the AAA slots to be a bit wider than what I printed so I haven’t tested this exact one but it should be fine. There’s always sand paper
I like TinkerCAD but sometime its simplicity can actually make things slower or more tedious. Here’s a brief example of how you could quickly create something like that in Fusion360 (free version) in case you ever feel like something a bit more powerful. I’m sure there are some even better methods than what I show here, but hey… I’m still learning too
Thanks for taking the time to make this. At least for this example this program seems only incrementally harder while having a lot more features. I will definitely try it out for future designs
I’m using for a long time fusion 360, and i made so much complicated project’s with this software. I think they should add some mathematics stuff like parabolic function.