There’s no doubting the allure of a nicely crafted LED cube; likewise, there’s no doubting that they can be a tremendous pain to build. After all, the amount of work scales as the cube of the number of LEDs you want each side to have, and let’s face it – with LED cubes, the bigger, the better. What to do about all that tedious lead forming?
[TylerTimoJ]’s solution is a custom-designed lead-forming tool, and we have to say we’re mighty impressed by it. His LED cubes use discrete RGB LEDs, the kind with four leads, each suspended in space by soldering them to wires. For the neat appearance needed to make such a circuit sculpture work, the leads must be trimmed and bent at just the right angles, a tedious job indeed when done by hand. His tool has servo-controlled jaws that grip the leads, with solenoid-actuated lead formers coming in from below to bend each lead just the right amount. The lead former, along with its companion trimmer, obviously went through a lot of iterations before [TylerTimoJ] got everything right, but we’d say being able to process thousands of LEDs without all the tedium is probably worth the effort.
We’re looking forward to the huge LED cubes this tool will enable. Perhaps this CNC wire bender and an automated wire cutter would come in handy for the supporting wires?
[james] sent us this tip. Thanks!
(O.o) for the project
for 16X16X16 cube
I don’t even have the patience to wire up a single RGB LED
Ah – apparently this comment section does not embrace angle brackets. Lesson learned. Uh hem – Akismet
I tried assembling/soldering RadioShack’s 3x3x3 LED kit (Arduino shield?).
What a pain!
A decent jig would have helped hold the LEDs in place for soldering.
Great build and awesome tips on 3d printing parts for usage concerns.
well done! Maybe cut, then clamp leads, a single grooved plate from below, one solenoid or linear servo?
You are right about the cost in terms of time! The hardware is cheap in comparison… a few hours and the cost of the hardware pales into comparison!
Very nice. By the way, how many hours did you spend making this, including theorising & planning?
That’s my kind of 4k display.
This was his FIRST 3D printed project!?!
Oh the self-loathing I feel :D