I 3D printed a battery holder that I’ll need later and I finished off assembling a 3D cube kit

Some years ago I’d bought an 8x8x8 LED cube kit.

I assembled the base board fairly quickly, then as the instructions were greatly lacking I didn’t get around to soldering all the LEDs together.

Recently I’ve been tidying my space a bit and found the uncompleted kit. A quick google found other people who were dissatisfied with the instructions and had provided better ones.

So, over time I’ve been gradually assembling the 8 sheets of 64 LEDs. In my head they would come out perfect, really nicely aligned, neatly soldered. In reality, not so much.

So today, I finally stuck the 64 tiny little legs into the 64 tiny little holes, then soldered the 64 joints on the side and broadly speaking, it’s working. There is an annoying LED in the middle that doesn’t light, but I’m not going to tell you which one it is and you’re not going to point it out either.

As this wasn’t making, just finishing off, I also printed a battery holder (18650) which has a really neat spring. It works fine in PLA and I’ll be using it to power the temperature and humidity sensor that I’ll put in yesterdays lathe cover.

What did I learn from this… Well I think today is a rough day. We are 11 days in and I’ve just had a day at work. I’m a bit tired and frankly ready for the weekend, a bit of relaxation and if I was going to give up on Makevember it would have been today. I’m really pleased to have finished off a kit I’ve had hanging around for literally years, but not really up to stretch myself to do anything more creative. It feels like I’ve cheated a little, but that said, I made a thing. Two things.