LED Work Light bracket for Geeetech Prusa I3 by DougInAZ

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

The bracket allows you to mount two LED strips on the X carriage, so they shine on the item being printed.
The LED strips I am using (because I have them) are by Diatone, but others speced for operation at 12 volts should work OK. http://www.banggood.com/Diatone-3-4S-LED-Decoration-Board-Strip-Set-For-250-Class-Frame-p-961260.html
There are 4 LED strips in the item: white, red, green, and blue. I'll only be using the white ones. They current cost from one supplier is about $1.50 per item (4 led strips). They are wired into the 12V fan power which is always on. I' probably add a small switch so they can be turned off; they are really bright!
Each white LED strips draws 10 milliamps with 12 volts across it, so the additional current load is minimal.
There are three items to print: the splint for stabilizing the two brackets, the left bracket found here, and the right bracket which is a mirror image of the left bracket created at print time.
The dark photo of the LED illumination may look like the illumination isn't very bright, but the exposure was reduced to make the light distribution more visible. It appears there will be more than enough light to observe the surface as it prints.
EDIT 12/9/16
It took me a while to realize that the LEDs should be moved closer to the extruder so the work is lighted better. I added some washers that you can use with a longer screw to move the lights forward. Scale the Z axis to get the length you need. I also scaled X&Y by 1.1 to make sure they fit without having to file the hole.