Tool to replace LEDs in a LED Cube by Flip_Schaumal

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

Unfortunately I broke some LEDs in my 3D LED cube (see https://sites.google.com/view/flips-cubicle/home for details). The LED cube consists of blocks of 12 x 4 x 12 LEDs, so it is hardly possible to get hold of each single LED during replacement.
I developed a tool which holds an LED during unsoldering and keeps holding it when picking it out of the cube. To bring the new LED to the correct position, the tool holds a new LED at the correct position and aligns by picking two other LEDs.
The tool consists of a frame with two independent sliders in it. On top of the slider there are pickers for LEDs: One half of each picker is fixed to the trame, the other half is moved by either slider. The sliders end in a handle, there is also a spring for each slider. The tool can be disassembled for changing the positions of the pickers and their assignments to the sliders. (As long as the springs are inserted, the sliders can not be disassembled. Once you remove the springs, you can disassemble and rearrange the sliders and the pickers.)
The design is done in OpenSCAD, mostly configurable using design parameters (LED grid size, LED dimensions, tolerances, other dimensions, ...). It can be splitted into smaller parts which can be printed (the complete tool has 30cm length, my print bed is 20cm.) At the splitting points, flats are provided for glueing. I added rulers to align and position the splitted parts during glueing.