3D Printed LED Light Strip

Material list

!. 3D printed parts; (either of your own design or from the downloaded files I have supplied)

2. 6 LED lights, I purchased mine from Ebay (20Pcs 5mm White Color Pre Wired LEDs 3-42V DC 20cm Wire for Car Boat ( 162014633380 ))

3. Push button switch, I purchased mine from Ebay (10 Pcs Horizontal 2 Terminals On Off Torch Push Button Switch White AC 250V 1.5A ( 321513640432 ))

4. 120 volt electrical cord (I used lamp cable)

5. Electrical connectors

6. Soldering tools

7. Power supply

Once you have printed up all your pieces you might want to consider dipping them in acetone it will make them harder and more structurally sound. If you do dip them then be careful how you let them dry, the plastic will be soft for 5 minutes of so.

Snap the holders onto the pivots and then move them around... a lot. Make sure they can move smoothly. If your printer prints a little rough you might have to sand the pivot balls with some 220 sand paper so that they allow movement of the LED holder. But don't sand them too much, you want the lights to stay where you point them. After you have them snapped together and they all move good feed the lights into them.

Using super glue, glue the push button switch into place. I show this step in the video.

In the light strip shown in the pictures I also super glued the pivot ball posts into place. Your choice.

With Light Emitting Diodes, (LED's), you need to make sure you know which direction the electricity needs to flow. They will only light up one way. In most cases if the wires have a red wire then that is the wire for incoming current. Test them to make sure.

Gather the red wires together and shorten them up so that you don't have to much excess wiring to deal with, (but not tight) there needs to be some slack so that the lights can pivot.

Strip about 1/4" off the ends and twist the wires together. Apply some soldering paste, (flux) to the wire bundle and solder them together. Then solder the bundle to one of the tabs on the switch, (don't forget to use the flux on the tab).

Shorten, strip, and solder the black wires as you did the red ones. I recommend that you shorten and locate them in a different location than the red wires so that you can avoid the possibility of a short.

Feed your supply line through the hole in the back plate and attach the common wire, (+) to the switch by solder.

Attach the ground wire, (-) to the black wires by use of a connector. By using a straight connector you will save space and it will lay down in the strip better than a wire nut, and it is a more permanent connection.

If you like you can also use a cable lock to keep the supply line from moving but I chose not to.

In the design I made the back plate so that it would snap into place once you have the lights and wires all connected. If you want you can also super glue the plate in place.

Decide how long you want your supply cord to be and then crimp on whatever connectors you want to use to connect to your power supply.

I have attached a file that has all of the designs of the parts I made for the light strip. I use SolidWorks for design but they can easily be converted to Fusion 360 if that is what you use. Also in the zip folders are the STL files ready to print.

Thanks for viewing this instructable. I hope you enjoyed it.