From Filament to Par Can in 48 Hours

 

I came into this project thinking it would be easy but I knew I would make it hard on myself. 3D printing was the way to go for me with the challenge being designing the whole thing from scratch with little references. The one reference was an 86.4 mm gel holder. 

My design process went like this...

    1. Design in Tinkercad

    2. Print parts

    3. Solder LED light

    4. Find out I can't dim LED light

    5. Panic

    6. Assemble Pieces

    7. Find out printed pieces don't fit

    8. Panic again

    9. Present

There were a lot of fixes and a lot of letting go. 3D printing everything has also shown me how long things take, and how big things can get. I know I can help people out with printing in the future. 

Moving onto the lighting part of this project. I found out that LED lights don't always dim. They need a transistor and I didn't have time to grab that. They will dim partially but while doing so they let off a flicker that is not pleasing at all. 

With the filament I used, it was a black color but has a slight shine to it so when the light was turned on, there were some reflections on the walls. To combat that and create a smoother edge, I lined the inside walls with aluminum foil. Not the prettiest but it works. 

All in all, very fun project and taught me to really double-check dimensions and maybe stick to something simpler next time.