A few members expressed interest in the 3d printed lights I mentioned when I became a member of BLF recently, so here are a few pics of a simple twisty light I printed out of ABS, this one has a mildly driven XML in it and uses an 18650 battery.
I inserted an aluminum tube, actually I measured and printed the light so that it would be a tight fit around the tube, this serves two purposes, as an electrical conductor from the tailcap and as a heat sink.
I was concerned about the ABS melting from the heat of the led when I first considered the project, I printed this at 491 degrees Fahrenheit so I figured the solder or the emitter would fail before the printed host, and there was an easy way to find out… print it and see what happens. I have not had any heat related problems and I have used this light quite a bit. These lights can be designed and printed as simple or complex as you like, you can sand, polish, paint or choose whatever color filament you like so the possibilities are unlimited. This particular light is directly off the printer, I have done nothing other than assembly.
Well done, still primitive looking (a bit chinese actually, from the Mao era), but the thing is, you can make it nicer and nicer, just by refining the design on the computer. And then even share it to someone on the other side of the world :-)
I didn’t see your first post, so excuse my ignorance of what you may have already covered. I’d like to know if you are offering to make these for paying customers, and what your pricing structure would look like. I have a rough Blender3D file of what I’d like to have. It would need a lot of work to make it suitable for sending to a printer. I wanted to buy a printer myself for this, but I can’t make it fit into my budget right now.
I printed this one before I increased the build height of my printer so it was printed as 4 parts, tail, body, head and bezel. I used a mixture of acetone with dissolved ABS filament to weld the head and body together, once welded you can not separate it without totally destroying it, I can now print the head and body as 1 piece.
The drop in and lens is held in with a printed bezel, if you notice the rings around the light, this creates a locking mechanism when tightly fitting two pieces together, tolerances can easily be adjusted and a new part printed until satisfactory, of course threads could be printed as well if needed. I’ve dropped this light from about 5 feet high while working on cars and have treated it pretty rough for at least a year and the bezel has never came loose.
What do you think the max drive current is before its to much heat for the plastic host? I’d be worried about the emeitter cooking way before the body melting, is that not the case? whats the melting point of the ABS plastic its made from?
The point at which the plastic deforms to the point of failure would be below this, at 491f it would be “runny” not pliable.
Pliable would allow the metal parts to start deforming the ABS.
I don’t know how hard you could push it before failure, honestly I just printed 3 of these when I first caught the light bug and have not experimented with them since. Hence the simple design just as proof of concept.
There are higher temp nylon filaments available if you really wanted to push it.
The drop in is pulling 2.5 amps and still continues to function normally.
ABS is very temp stable(a small window between pliable and liquid) I cannot extrude even the smallest amount at anything less than 455 degrees so I would guess that it could begin to deform somewhere between 435 and 440, at this point the emitter, driver board and solder would have already failed.
I’m liking the sound of that, I don’t know a lot about 3D printing but it is the way to go.
I post on another board, British Blades, and there was a post recently about a 3Dprinted knife handle very cool.
Depends on what grade of ABS. Most ABS would soften at a lower temperature, if exposed for a long period of time, to that lower temperature. Of course, the real problem with plastic is that it is a good insulator, so the pill would get hot much sooner and it would not be good for high power mods.
Would it be possible to print around metal? Sort of like having a plastic bezel, head, but with a metal section where the pill was and then plastic after that? This would give some of the heat a chance to get to the outside, through the metal.
It's an interesting concept and I would think sooner or later someone will make some form of printed light that will be sold.
