{"id":1565,"date":"2011-08-15T20:39:36","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T00:39:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2024-06-03T18:19:51","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T22:19:51","slug":"when-a-maker-gets-married","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/when-a-maker-gets-married\/","title":{"rendered":"When a Maker Gets Married"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nI got married a couple of weeks ago. We did all the planning \/ decoration ourselves. By we, or course, I mean my wife. One of the things she wanted to do was have paper lanterns suspended above the tables.<\/p>\n

The initial plan was to use throwies, but I felt they wouldn’t give as much light as a commercial 3 LED solution<\/a>. This led me to a fun, albeit time consuming project.
\n
\nThe commercial version boasts a 12 hour life, which probably means 6-8 hours at decent brightness. I was looking for something that we could set up the night before, so I settled on 3 LEDs powered by 2 AA batteries. (It turns out that this provided bright light for 3-4 days, with the LEDs still going after 1.5 weeks)<\/p>\n

The Design <\/h3>\n

The over-arching design constraint was to have the lights held pretty high within the lantern. Initially I had thought they would be in the middle, but because LED light radiates out in a cone, having them higher leads to more of the lantern being lit.<\/p>\n

constraint #2 came from the fact that I decided to 3D print the frame. Since I was making A lot of these (75) I needed to make them as quickly as possible. This meant a skeletal design using as little plastic as possible. Here’s what I came up with:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s just a bare minimum of plastic there. most of the structural integrity comes from the batteries themselves. By making the batteries parallel to the ground I was also able to get the lights a little higher than if they had been perpendicular.<\/p>\n

Construction <\/h3>\n

Designing \/ printing of the frame was only the beginning. I was able to print 4 holders at a time on sprout’s<\/a> thingomatic. During the 38 minute print, I would wire up the previously printed set. It took me a while to settle on an efficient assembly technique, but here’s what I wound up with (mouse over for description, click for larger image):
\n\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since these were designed to be used only once, and they weren’t going to be moving around a lot, I was ok just melting loops of wire into the ABS frame. Springs and plates would have been more robust, but also more costly and time consuming.<\/p>\n

Once the unit was assembled, I inserted the batteries using a piece of paper to break the circuit prior to installation. While not technically needed, I also secured the batteries with tape so they wouldn’t fall out during transport.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nOne design wrinkle I ran across during setup: the 3 LED configuration created weird hot-spots on the sides of the lanterns. A single-ply piece of kleenex taped over the lights acted as a diffuser. It slightly diminished the intensity of the light, but it provided that soft glow we were after.<\/p>\n

Results <\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think they turned out great. They produced the desired lighting effect, and I got many “wait… you did what?” responses. In the end it took me about 20min per unit. considering I made 75 of these it was a complete commercial flop. BUT it’s always fun to exercise the design muscles, and I was able to contribute something personal to our celebrations. <\/p>\n

UPDATE: Part has been uploaded to Thingiverse<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nI got married a couple of weeks ago. We did all the planning \/ decoration ourselves. By we, or course, I mean my wife. One of the things she wanted to do was have lit paper lanterns suspended above the tables.<\/p>\n

The initial plan was to use throwies, but I felt they wouldn’t give as much light as a commercial 3 LED solution<\/a>. This led me to a fun, albeit time consuming project.
\n“> Read More…<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,16,5],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-1565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-electronic","category-projects","tag-makerbot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":51,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7210,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions\/7210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}