Hi everyone,
I’m a beginner in electronics and I just managed to make my first PCB board that senses current, pretty excited about it
Now I’m working on the enclosure design and I had this idea: I want to put a ring (like the letter “O”) on the case, and when the device is plugged in, the O lights up. That way, even at night, you can see if it’s working.
I’m thinking something like:
The “O” shape on the front of the enclosure, An LED inside that lights it up, Visible glow even in the dark
But I’m not sure how to actually make this work. Do I:
Use a clear plastic ring that goes through the case? or Make the case thin in that spot and backlight it? Use some kind of light pipe thing I’ve heard about?
I’m planning to 3D print the enclosure for now, but would love to hear from anyone who’s done something similar. What materials work best? How do you get even lighting without just seeing a bright LED dot?
Any ideas or tips would be really appreciated!
Thanks!
Hi, since you are 3D-printing the case, you could have it printed from a translucent or thin white material and painted (JLCPCB offers spray painting now, others probably too), then use a sandpaper to remove paint from the feature you want to be lighted up. Works well for small batches, you just need to think about the brushing process (maybe prepare a metal stencil for the shape). SLS or similar can be a good diffuser for light.
Another cheap option is to make the front panel from a PCB and remove top+bottom copper and solder mask from the sections you want to light up.
There are a couple of ways to do this that I know of. Both would be described as diffusion. The first one sound more suitable for you because you have already fixed the location of your LED(s) with respect to the enclosure. You would look to use a translucent piece of plastic with the LED set back some distance from it. Or you could use transparent plastic which has had the surface roughened, perhaps with wet and dry paper or fine sandpaper. Wet sanding can result in a more even finish in my experience. Another way you could implement your “O” (I would describe it as a ring doughnut or annular shape) might be instead of cutting a hole in your opaque enclosure face, installing a ring and then installing an opaque circle to fill the centre, you could make the whole lid out of translucent plastic and add light-blocking film or paint over the top, like Adam suggests.
The second approach is edge lighting. This is where you get a transparent material such as acrylic sheet, which is thick enough to shine the LEDs into the edges of the sheet and achieve total internal reflection. You then roughen the large surface of the transparent sheet and light spills out there, because the internal reflection fails. But you need to be able to place your LED at the edge of the sheet to make this work and it might not be an option for you with this project.
I’ve done a few “lighted ring” products. I don’t know how big your ring is, but typically you want at least 4-6 LEDs around the circumference regardless of your light pipe or diffuser setup.
If you’re projecting onto a diffuser, there is no better material in the universe than Lee Filters #216. It’s astounding how much better it is than anything else.
