Finally finished installing some LED strips on my BigBox. Since i already had a reel of naked flexi-PCB LED strip, i decided to design and print my own LED strip brackets (seen here in the back): Heat shouldn't be an issue, i've been running these before and they don't seem to dissipate a lot of heat. The adhesive backing they have on them, however, is atrocious, so we'll see how they hold up. The brackets are angled - there are two on top, and two under the horizontal reinforcements ("shelves"). The top ones are angled 45 degrees, the bottom ones 30 degrees for some upwards spill and more sideways lighting. There's a little shade on the front of the brackets to prevent light spill through the front of the printer: The strips are 12V, so i'm running two on each side in series, then both in parallel (2S2P). The cabling for the left ones is routed along the back and top to the right side, then both cables go alongside the sleeving for the X axis, down into the base. I was out of thin sleeves, and it's a bit tight there too, so in the end, i've used a leftover piece of PTFE tubing (thin walled one) that came with the printer as a conduit. Makes it neater and was very easy to route. Once i got the wiring into the base, i realised i don't have a convenient pad to connect them to. The PSU cabling leading to RUMBA is already way too thick for the screw terminals on the RUMBA, so squeezing the lighting wires in alongside the power terminals was out of the question. I realised i probably should've spliced the 24V enclosure fan cable and used that, but at that point, it was already late and i was too tired to dismantle everything once again, so instead, i soldered the anode wires from the LED strips to the top pads of the fuses (+24V), and the cathode wires to the nearby GND through holes (or maybe overly large vias) next to one of the PSU diodes. A bit iffy, and not very serviceable, but i'll worry about it next time i'm wiring things. Here's the result:
Depends on the wire used. I've used very thin solid core wires that tend to shear / snap off when subjected to pressure of a screw terminal meant for a larger gauge. Also, after messing with the terminals on both ends, it dawned on me that maybe soldering them *after* the fuses (as i ended up doing) isn't a bad idea as a permanent solution either Anyways, here are the files:
Awesome, thanks for the files! I've got a ton of strips myself leftover from RC night flyer builds so this is going to be great.
This was 22 solid x 2 (each side separately). I was doing this over the weekend, and the only wire stock i had in house was 26 silicone wire (which i didn't want to waste on this, plus, 26 is pushing it) and two big spools of what i've used. Not much of a choice I'll likely rewire at some point. I plan on hooking up a couple of MOSFETs to two of the unused pins on EXT3 and putting some RGB strips in the base. Marlin has a feature i used to use on the old printer - temperature indication via two LEDs (or strips). It's a neat reminder to have the whole printer glow red when hot (and blue when cooled down).
So I attached these directly to the Rumba at the same point as the 12V case fan and it works great. I really like this design and it was super easy to put in place. Thanks for sharing the models!
