Description

This project adds rgb lighting to your 3D Printer. The stl files provided are specifically designed for the Creality Ender 3 with BLTouch installed. Feel free to remix this to make a fitting variant for your printer model, but take note of the license first.

Why should i need this?

• Makes first layers perfectly visible
• Shows dust particles on bed and all small cracks/scratches
• Shows any dirt/fat/fingerprints on the bed

Hardware used

Necessary

• 1 piece: PCB for SMD led's - 0402/0603/0805
• 4 pieces: RGB led's 3528 (common anode/VCC)
• 2 pieces: M4x10
• 1 piece: 12 Ohm resistor
• X pieces: 30 AWG Wires
• 1 piece: Borosilicate glass, transparent with milky edges
• 1 piece: Raspberry Pi (any model)

Optional

• Dupont DIY kit
• Heat shrink tubes
• Cable clip
• PTC heating plate (to solder the led's on the pcb)

It's best to buy these parts from aliexpress if you have patience, so you don't have to sell a kidney to be able to afford them from amazon. By now they offer a 10-day delivery for a lot of products.

Software Used

• OctoPrint
• OctoPrint-Enclosure (Plugin)

Assembly

1. Print the provided stl files, support needed for the pcb holder
2. File down the printed parts if necessary, so the mechanism works seamlessly
3. Solder the rgb led's to the pcb
4. Solder wires to the other side of the pcb
5. Slide the pcb into the housing
6. Solder the wires together by bundling each color to a single wire. Same for VCC/anode
7. Place the bottom part on your printer and put the two M4x10 screws in
8. Slide the assembled top part containing the pcb into the frame first, then slide it down and into the broad hole, the bottom part provides
9. Add a 12 Ohm resistor to the red LED's wire. Red is rated ~2.2V DC, Blue and Green ~3.3V DC each
10. Connect the wires to your Raspberry Pi. VCC goes to a constant 3.3V pin. The rest of the wires to a gpio pin each

Software setup

1. Install the OctoPrint-Enclosure Plugin, linked above
2. Go to your plugin settings and assign the corresponding GPIO pin of each color to an output for each. E.g. Red led is connected to GPIO 5, so its output type is "Regular IO", its id is 1 (automatically assigned), its "IO number" is 5 and "Active Low" is checked

Control

• Via button: Click on "Enclosure Plugin" tab in your OctoPrint Web-Interface to either turn on or off each color
• Via gcode: In the plugin settings of enclosure plugin, scroll to the bottom, open the advanced settings and check "Enable gcode control" to be able to control your lights using G-Codes. This gives you the ability, to e.g. turn the bed red when a print job starts and green once the print is finished. Read the docs. An example:

  ENC O1 S0 ; Red bed light offENC O2 S1 ; Green bed light onENC O3 S0 ; Blue bed light off

Notes

• The led's used have a common anode, not the best solution. i used what i had. Instead, using WS2812 (neopixels) would be a lot cleaner, but i am missing a controller IC and don't want to add an arduino just for that. This would however decrease the cable count to be wired to the PCB.
• The GPIO pins serve as ground pins, so setting a color's pin to low would turn the light on and vice versa, unless you flip this in the gpio pin settings. If you decide to use PWM instead (which would enable you to control the brightness), a duty cycle of 0 would turn on the light, 100 turns it off.
• On an Ender 3, the max Y-axis coordinate that is lightable is Y=170. Anything higher than that is not reachable by the led bar and would go dark.
• I highly recommend you to get the "optional" PTC heating element to solder on the led's. I initially tried to to it with my soldering iron, terrible results, even with enough flux. Then with a heat gun, also bad. The PTC heating plate turned this into a childs play, the led's just snapped into their places (pre-tin the upper face first and use flux)

Disclaimer

I am not responsible for any damage you might cause, execute this build at your own risk.