Origami LED Lamp

What is it?

This project shows you how to create an origami paper crane lamp. Some things you will have to do to create this project are soldering and 3D printing. It combines many different elements to create a singular product. The lamp will be something you can plug into a device such as your computer to turn it on. It is a fun project and is easy and simple to make. 

1) USB Wire

2) 3 Origami Cranes, square paper 10cm by 10cm 

3) 6 Electrical wires around 23cm long  

4) 3 LEDs (of any colour 5mm)

5) Perf Board (5 by 2.5 cm) 

8) Access to soldering iron  

7) Access to 3D Printer (Lamp base File Linked Bellow)

Mark the bottom and the top of 1 wire with a mark of any colour (preferably with a whiteboard marker so you can remove it later). Get another wire (this one is not marked) and twist the two wires together. Above you can see what it should look like.

The whiteboard marker now helps tell you to identify the different wires, and this is useful later on when soldering. All the marked parts of the wires will be soldered to the short end of the LED, this is the cathode (negative) end of the LED. You can see this in the second image attached above. Knowing which wire is which is important so we can connect it to the right side of the USB wire later on.

This circuit will be a Parallel circuit. This means that all the LED wires will receive the same amount of voltage coming from the power source. Since I will be plugging my lamp into my computer I will receive 5 volts of electricity, this would usually cause an LED to blow up, however, since I am using blue LEDs they require more voltage to light up (the average 5mm Blue LED has requires a minimum of 2.5 to 4 volts to light up compared to red or green which require around 2 volts of energy. The LED's that I used are rated to 5 volts. If you are using any other color of LED I would recommend using a resistor of 75 ohms as shown above. Nonetheless, you could also connect your lamp to a battery, and to do this you would simply have to solder your perf board to your battery holder instead of a USB wire, however, the process will still be the same. If you use batteries I recommend using 4 double-A batteries.

You can see what the circuit and schematic drawing will look like above. The reason a resistor is required in Tinkercad is because the only colour of LED you can use is red LED but I am using a blue in reality.

Above you can see my soldering set-up, some important safety notes when soldering are:

1. Wear closed-toe shoes. 
2. Make sure you turn the soldering iron off when not in use and never put it down on the work table.
3. Have a wet sponge (this is to clean the excess solder) 
4. Safety glasses (When cutting the wires and soldering) 
5. Don’t touch the soldering iron directly when it’s turned on. Only hold the rubber grip. 
6. Don’t wear loose clothes that can get in the way. 
7. Tie up your hair.

First, I began by striping the wires on both sides. I then continued soldering the Cathode (short) side of the LED to the (negative) marked side of the electrical wire. (It’s essential to make sure that the blue marking still stays on and that you can see it on both ends)

After this, you can solder the positive end of the LED. Repeat this for all 3 LEDs and above you can see a photo of what this will look like when finished.

For the perf board I am using, all the lines are connected vertically, which means that the charge can automatically move back and forth on between these lines. All the marked parts of the electrical wire should align together in the same row of the perf board, and the unmarked ends should also align together in a different row. After soldering, it should look like the images above.

Now, you can put the electrical wires through the opening at the top of the 3D printed base, as can be seen from the image above.

Next, put the USB wire through the hole on the side of the lamp base and solder it to the perf board such that the black (Negative) end sits on the same column as the marked ends and the red (positive) end of the USB wire sits on the same column as the other ends of the non-marked electrical wire. 

If you are instead using batteries you can do the same thing where you solder the black wire of the battery holder to the negative row of the perf board and the red wire sits on the positive row of the perf board.

After soldering everything you can use duct tape to stick the perf board to the top of the lamp base. From a top view, it should look like the first image.

Now we can put the cranes on the top of the LEDS. To do this make a small cut in the bottom of your origami crane and put the LED through.

To connect my lamp to my computer I will be using a USB to USBC adapter.