gChart's Machine Made Class, 9th Annual BLF/OL contest - COMPLETE!

Update posted!

… And I guess I’m officially in Machine Made now

Yes, you are! Adjustment being made in the O-L master topic list

For those not familiar with NeoPixel / WS2812B LEDs…

Neopixels!! Looking forward to this one :disguised_face:

Very nice project you have going there ‘gchart’ :+1:
I am always Amazed with the lights you build :smiley:
Can not wait to see it finished.

Busy weekend working on the light (of sorts).

First off, a clip of the first piece being printed:

And here’s the end result of that:

With the middle section complete, time to design the top and bottom pieces using Fusion 360:

And here’s a shot of that lower section being “sliced” in Cura (taking the 3D model and turning it into 3D printer instruction code):

Here’s a shot of that top cap being printed:

The first iteration of the base being printed. Notice the organically looking structure in that middle. Those are “tree supports” that give overhang something to print onto. You can’t just print in mid air!

And, well, I didn’t get a couple pieces of the design perfect on the first try. So back to Fusion 360 for a couple adjustments, and back to the printer. This time I used a more “normal” support structure of lines. The original print of the base took 18 hours. I didn’t want to wait that long for the revision so I greatly increased the speeds and played with the support structure settings to get it down to 6 hours. What a difference some of the settings came make. Generally speed comes at the expense of quality, but it worked out fine for this model.

So… the physical pieces of this light are pretty much done. I’ll show off a bit more of it later. It’s time to move onto software/firmware!

Thanks Gchart for making this show for us. I really enjoy watching the progress, just need to replenish my popcorn :slight_smile:

Awesome, gchart.
Can’t wait to watch the next “episodes” of your flashlight build.

Cool stuff growing up here :beer:

Interesting seeing what you are doing, I have one of those colour rings myself I haven’t utilised. I love that you are using a 3d printer, something I keep toying with buying, but luckily have made a good friendship with a guy who already has one who offered to do things for me.
Amazing machines, and by the looks of it an amazing light is coming out of it!

My wife would love the different colors. No 3d printer, but I may have to learn how to wire an microcontroller and write code for it :slight_smile: I can hardly wait to show her your final product!

After long delay, I’ve finally made it a priority to get this finished up!

The pieces:

Top of the base with it’s Neopixel ring

Underside of the base with the Wemos D1 Mini (an Arduino-capable board with wifi) and a battery

Top cap, nothing too special

Lithophane, panel 1: the BLF web banner

Lithophane, panel 2: my initials and info about the contest

Lithophane, panel 3: the awesome flamed MagLite that you see in Justin’s (Old Lumen’s) avatar. What a special and great looking build!

All assembled, unlit

Here are the three panels of the lithophane with everything assembled but unlit

All lit up

Same thing, but now lit up!

A quick animation of the lithophane in action

A video of the build in action

Web controller interface

But wait. there’s more… want to control the color of the lamp? Just head here and go for it! http://ol9.ghart.com:8080 But what good is it to control it if you can’t see what you’re changing? You can tune in here: http://ol9.ghart.com:8888/video :smiley:

Attribution: much of the controller code was borrowed from this tutorial

Super job, gchart!! That is really cool, and including Old Lumens’ avatar light is very touching as well. I’ve seen them before but I didn’t know lithopanes were called lithopanes, so I learned something again. Very cool project, and I’m saying that as a guy who is totally not in to lanterns. Nice work. :slight_smile:

Wow! That is superb! But then so are your previous projects. Very nicely done.

That’s amazing!

I just made it flash like a police light. This is fun!

Wow gChart, that’s super fun! Can’t show my kids this one :stuck_out_tongue: They’ll want one and it’s definitely beyond my current capabilities :smiley:

That is simply awesome. :person_with_crown: I didn’t even know that such a thing as lithophanes existed.

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I second that :+1: Amazing build gchart :sunglasses:
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Wow that’s very cool!
At a glance I thought I see a flexible screen attached.