Introduction: Blinky MakerBeam Cube (holocron)

By

Everyone loves cubes - and we from Munich Maker Lab are extremely cube-lovers :D

So we decided to build one cube by the MakerBeam profiles, laser cut acrylic and 3D printed edges.
And the best on these cubes - you can make it in any size and put everything into you want.
We decided to put some lights into the cube - to have an awesome ambient Hackerspace decoration.

Step 1: Material

For this cube you need:

  • 12 MakerBeam profiles
  • 96 MakerBeam M3 bolts with square head, 6mm
  • 6 acrylic plates (size: depending on your cube size. Attention: please make them 6mm longer and higher than your profiles)
  • 8 3D printed edges
  • some battery driven lights to put into the cube (or you can cut one small hole into one acrylic plate)

We use here the black 100mm MakerBeam profiles and 106mmx106mm frozen acrylic plates.

Step 2: 3D Printed Edges

If you are using Cura - you can see all the settings on the two screenshots.
The stl file in attachment is layout to print 4 edges at one run.
So you have to print it twice to get all the 8 edges.

PS: you can use these edges also for other projects in combination with the MakerBeam profiles.

Attachments

Step 3: Construction

To construct this awesome cubes, you have to connect the edges with the profiles to build a frame.
It is recommend to connect on side after you have slide in the acrylic plate ;)

After you have build the bottom side of the cube, you can stack in the 4 profiles for the side walls.

Than just slide in the acrylic plates and build the top side (like the bottom one)

You will see, that the M3 6mm square heads are sometimes hard to slide on - It will work, but this will take a time to connect all the edges.

But the good news: if you screw everything together, the cube will be enormous stable and you can also throw it around if you want :D

Step 4: Finish Cube

After you connect all the edges and slide in all the acrylic plates into the profiles - your cube is finished and looks like holocron.

But remember to put first some lights into, after connect the last bolts and screws :D

Next cube will have some engraved acrylics to look like the holocron (see last picture)