rapman-education's posterous

rapman-education's posterous

Dave White  //  A place for educators, teachers, lecturers and students to find "stuff" about RapMan,BfB3000 and BfB 3DTouch printers... The unofficial Blog by Dave White, Advanced Skills Teacher and Head of D&T in Clevedon School UK.

Apr 22 / 2:23pm

LED Lights and 3D Printing

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The other day I came across some inexpensive LED panels that are really intended for replacing conventional bulbs in cars. This got me thinking about how these can be used in school. We have some display cases in the D&T department that are used to display work done by our students and there isn't any lighting... Hardly the way to showcase outstanding work... So something needs to be done!

I needed to try out these LED lights and then it struck me, an application that would try out the lights and help keep Mrs W happy with all the 3D printing I have been doing. Mrs W always complains that our kitchen is too dark, so what about using these light for under cupboard lighting?

The LED panels come with a sticky pad on the back and after trying these out for a couple of days I found that the heat and steam in the kitchen made them fall off... So this is where the 3D printing comes in!

I quickly designed a bezel or surround that would contain the LED panel and had screw fixings to attach it to the cupboard... You can see the designs, 3D prints, and the final solution in place in the attached pictures.

Mrs W is very happy with the results and now I'm wondering about how students can incorporate these in their D&T project work... And of course do the lighting for the display cases in school.