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Recently I got a Prusa i3 mk3 3D printer. It’s been a blast so far. The one issue I’ve had with it so far is not so much with the printer but with the lighting in the room I use it in. I constantly found myself using my phone as a flashlight in order to see what was going on. So I thought, why don’t I print some mounts and add some LED strips? And that’s what I did.
I designed the parts to fit the LED strips I had on hand. They are about 28 mm wide and can be cut every 50 mm. I wanted light to come from both the top and the sides as I thought that would make it easy to see both the part and the nozzle. I also didn’t want to have to modify the printer at all, so the mounts just clip onto the frame.
I wired the lights up so that there was one switch for the top two lights and a three way switch for the bottom two lights. This way, I can only have one of the bottom two lights on at a time, but that is fine as the other one would be shining in your eyes anyway.
The parts all printed without issue and after a couple of minor tweaks to the design, I had mounts that I was happy with. Wiring it all up took a little while but was simple enough. As my LED strips are 24 V, they are just wired in to the power supply on the printer meaning no external supply. The power supply on the printer has plenty of spare capacity so adding this small amount of lighting is no problem for it.
I’m really happy with the lights and it has made the printing expierience much better for me. It’s just so much more convinient than using my phone.
The Solidworks design files and printable STL files are available on Github.
There is one light on either side of the printer mounted to the top frame and one either side of the bed.
One of the bottom mounted lights.
One of the top mounted lights.
