LED Lighting for 3D Printer Enclosure

To start off you need some sort of LED Light kit and an enclosure you would like to add it to. In my case I have an old Anet A8 that I use on a daily basis and just wanted to make it a bit more presentable. Not to mention the lighting in my garage isn't adequate for me to see details on my prints.

• LED Light Kit
• Enclosure

Plan where you want to place the lights. Taking a little bit of time here will make sure you have enough light and an appropriate plate to mount them. For my enclosure I decided on mounting them behind the vertical posts and top horizontal beam of my enclosure. Here is where you measure out the lengths of LED strips that you will need.

Next you will need to prepare the surface for the adhesive backing to stick well. For my application I smoothed the wood with a light sanding and cleaning after. You don't want to stick the LED strip to a rough or dirty surface. I cut my strips into 3 parts making sure to cut where designated by the little scissor symbol on the LED strip.

My kit came with a couple of flex cables with connectors for tight bends. For the connectors to work properly you need to peel back the paper backing from the adhesive strip and line up the polarities on the connector and strip. Clamp down hard till the connector locks onto itself. Once the strips are assembled connect the power supply and test to make sure you got the polarities right before sticking the strip to the surface only to find out that its backwards. If everything checks out then you can peel back the paper backing and position the strip onto their appropriate location and press down firmly to ensure proper adhesion.

This part is pretty straight forward. The kit should come with a power supply that you just plug into a power strip or a wall outlet. The power strip on my printer cart is limited on space and seeing that the LED strip and my 3d printer both run on 12 volts I decided to tap into the additional power taps on the printer's power supply. For this I just cut the cable going from the LED strip to the power supply long enough to reach the printer's power source. Strip the wire back far enough to properly engage the taps on the power supply. Once more making sure you have polarities correct, with the power supply unplugged from the wall, back out the screws on the power taps and screw down onto the LED strip wires..

If all went well you should have well lit enclosure. Enjoy!