X rail LED strip mod

[Julien]

I had been wanting to stick a strip of LEDs under the X rail for sometime, finally did it over the week-end

I picked up the 24V on the controller board, and for such a small length of LED strip I guess the extra power consumption won’t hurt the power supply. Nothing fancy, but I like the added light already, time will tell if this is actually useful or not.

[luc.onthego (Luc)]

Shapeoko bling???

[Julien]

Exactly! After watercooling for the spindle, it was only a matter of time before I added LEDs

[stutaylo (Stu)]

I’ve had a roll of white LEDs sitting in my cupboard for some time now… How do you find it on the bottom of the gantry? That’s where I was planning to put it

[neilferreri (Neil Ferreri Ω)]

@Julien Are you just using the adhesive on the strip? I’d be worried it will come unglued and create a spectacular mess when an endmill gets a hold of it.

[DanoInTx (Dan Nelson)]

I actually did the same on my XXL with a kit that the guy from EVGuide sent me. It’s an excellent upgrade, especially for my aging eyes. Now I wanna do the same on my laser!

Edit: forgot to mention, LEDs use very little energy. I doubt the power supply will care at all, and if it does it was borderline to begin with.

Dan

[stutaylo (Stu)]

Could you see any issue in running it off the power from the inductive limit switches? or better to keep it external from them?

[Julien]

I forgot to mention that I used a “waterproof” LED strip, so that it is dust-proof.

@stutaylo :

1. yes that is where I put it, on the underside of the extrusion flush against the edge. It seemed to make the most sense to direct the light at the wasteboard, and there is a clear path there with nothing else in the way. The only difficulty is having a strip that can be cut to the “right” length to match the width of the gantry. Mine happened to be about right, it’s ~1/4" too long, so it has a little bend at one end.
2. Maybe you could pull off running 5V power from the wire supplying the switches, but I’m not sure I would do it: there’s the matter of the amperage going in that small wire that is normally designed to carry milliamps only, but also I wouldn’t like to have a potential source of interference between the limit switch detection and something else drawing much more power on the same wire. On my standard-size SO3, the controller and its 24V pins are right there at the back of the gantry, so it’s convenient. On an XL or XXL I guess it would mean having one more wire go through the drag chains.

@DanoInTx : good to know you like that upgrade on yours. The other option I considered was adding lighting to the dust shoe only, but it’s a bit more difficult to do in a clean way.

@neilferreri : true, right after I put it there I started thinking that that double-sided tape was not going to hold it there forever, so I think I will be 3D-printing a few giant clips tonight, to secure it to the back of the gantry.

[Microwave_Monkey (Scott)]

It’s like a new lease on life for the old eyes. I went so far as to superglue some inside my dust boot as well

[cnc-life (Robin)]

I did mine the other week.
I have LED strip and back and in the middle aswell as the 2 sides.
Made an extension cable to do the front strip.

[Microwave_Monkey (Scott)]

I love the “door” on your enclosure. Did you heat and bend the plastic?

[cnc-life (Robin)]

Yes, I have hot air gun and folded plastic over a wooden straight edge.

It took a while to heat the plastic unto right temp as I was having to move gun backwards and forwards to get plastic hot enough.