A bit of background on 3D printers: hundreds of different filaments are available in a wide range of colors and materials. The cheapest and most widely used is PLA, so I’ve been using white PLA for the prototyping. The plan is to make the actual orb out of more expensive transparent PETG material.
With a functional prototype of the orb done the question is whether or not we can achieve the desired lighting effects.
To do this we are going to print an orb top and bottom out of transparent PETG and then wrap the LED lighting strip around the inner structure. This will allow us to determine how the light looks, but will not let us use any actual patterns or effects. The final orb will have the LED strips carefully arranged so that LED patterns can be used – much like was done on the MegaTree for Christmas.
Assemble the orb and fit it into the dragon paw. So far, so good – everything fits together. The transparent PETG for the orb looks good.
Now to find out how it looks with lights. The major questions are whether or not it is bright enough, does it have an attractive appearance, and how it looks when changing the color and brightness of the individual LED pixels.
Success! The LEDs are bright enough. They look good – the inner structure of the 3D printed shell works well to diffuse the light and presents an attractive appearance.The transparent PETG material achieves the desire look with and without lights. The dynamic patterns generated by the WLED controller work well. Basically, we have the technology to build the Wizard Staff we first envisioned.
Since this is a prototype there are some issues. Ignore the light shining through the dragon paw – the final version will be printed with black filament and painted. I’ve got thoughts around a mottled dark green skin with red veins and dark yellow nails. I’m going to have to learn how to use an airbrush before this project is over.
While the lighting effect is good, you can see the bands from the four strings of lights. This would work, but we should try increasing the number of light strings in the final version.
While the current size of 4″ is good it wouldn’t hurt to make it bigger – perhaps 5″ or 6″.
We need to figure out how to connect the dragon paw to the rest of the staff – just sticking a pole in the hole in the dragon paw wouldn’t look very good.
With the success of this prototype and technology demonstrator it is time to start working on the next version. I have too much experience to call it the final version…