Portable Led Light by NirDobovizki

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

This is a portable led light that can be attached to anything I have and can work on batteries or an external power adaptor.
This model works very well but require a bit more sanding and gluing than I'd like.
This is a very bright, lightweight and versatile light fixture.
On one side there's a 1/4" thread you can connect to any standard photo/video tripod and a flash-leg-like connector that will fit any photo lightstand with a cold-shoe and can even be mounted on a camera.
On the other side there's a 10mm hole that can fit a worklight tripod and a convenient carrying handle you can hold or hang on any hook.
It can be powered from a set of 4 AA batteries (I recommend rechargeable because very bright leds can consume quite a bit of power) or a 5v power supply with a 5mm plug.
You can add a DC-DC converter (or a cable with inline DC-DC converter) to run off a power supply that isn't 5v.
Designed with SketchUp, STL cleaned up with Microsoft 3D Builder, the copy in the photos was sliced using Cura and printed on my Robo3D R1+
Required non printable parts:

The leds - 5 Round SMD "beads" leds, 7.5mm in diameter, as bright as you can get, I used those 1w leds from AliExpress


Resistors, I trust you to know how to match the resistors to the leds (or at least to look up an on-line led calculator)


A 4xAA battery holder - 5.7cm x 6.2cm x 1.5cm size AliExpress


A switch, 3 pin SPDT toggle switch, internal part size 13mm x 8.5mm, 6mm holeAliExpress


A 5.5mm socket, note that there's only 10mm space behind the hole AliExpress


(Optional) 1/4 inch hex nut


One or two short 2mm diameter screws

Some electrical wires
Printing instructions
I printed everything (except the dome) in PLA, 3 shells (1.2mm walls) and 1.2mm top/bottom.
The base part requires support, but the supported part is internal and we don't care it will come out nice, you can make the support sparser than normal.
Also, the base needs some infill to make the handle stronger, I used 10%.
Except for the base the parts don't need support or infill.
The plate part should be printed in black or white, to avoid any color cast (or, you can use yellow or orange to warm up the light or blue to cool it down), white is best because it will reflect more light out, I used black because that's what I had when I printed it.
The dome needs to be white (unless you want colored light) and almost transparent, not fully transparent because the leds are painful to look at directly - you can get this with very thin opaque filament.
I printed it in ABS (because that's what I had) with two shells, couldn't get the center of the dome to print with just one shell, even with two shells there's an areas that isn't quite solid in the center, I guess I could make it print better with 3 shells but it's a tradeoff between light efficiency and perfectness (is that a word?) of the dome.
Assembly
Start with the plate, attach the leds to the plate (hot glue works really well here) and solder the leds to the resistors and wires, there are 2 small holes in the plate for the two wires.
Test everything lights up before continuing.
Attach the dome to the plate, it should pressure-fit around the plate edge.
Glue the plate to the underside of the base, pass the wires to the other side of the base using the small rectangular hole.
Place the battery holder into it's position in the base, pass the wires into the small window so you can access them later, use short 2mm screws to secure the battery box.
Make sure the back fits into the base, you may need to sand the edges of the little flaps that goes into the base, there are two sets of holes, the holes that is open in one side is one of the holes for the back, the other set of holes are for the battery cover
Connect the socket to the back and the switch to the switch cover.
Solder the - wire from the leds together with the - wire from the socket and the - wire from the batteries.
Stick all the + wires into the small rectangular hole in the back and solder the + wire from the batteries to one side of the switch, the + from the socket to the other side and the + from the leds to the middle
Glue the back into it's position on the base.
Glue the switch cover into the back, make sure the switch direction matches the arrows on the back.
Insert the hex nut into the hole in the flash hot-shoe like side, lock it into place using the screw cover, this should pressure-fit and is very tight, you may need to hummer it in a little.
That's it, enjoy your light.