Halloween Orange Laser Etched Into a Glowing Mini Pumpkin

When you squint a bit and loose scale these mandarin oranges look a bit like small pumpkins. I wanted to rev up the Halloween spirit around the house and without a real pumpkin to carve I settled for the next best thing. That is of course a laser etched pumpkin carving onto a mini orange which is lit from the inside using an LED.

You can see the Hacked Gadgets article about this Halloween Orange Laser Etched into a Glowing Mini Pumpkin here .

Step 1: Items Needed

To make this you will need (you probably have everything except for the three electronic parts listed):
* A small orange
* An image to etch
* A laser etching machine (or could manually cut with knife)
* An 10mm White LED
* A 360 ohm resistor
* A battery snap
* A 9 volt battery
* A knife to cut the hole for the LED
* Camera with long exposure capability if you want some creepy pictures

Step 2: Download the Image to Etch

Do a Google search for Halloween Pumpkin Carving Stencils and you will find lots of interesting things to etch onto your small orange. You will need to reduce the size of the image quite a but though for the small fruit. I got the image I used from here .

Step 3: Etch the Image Onto the Orange

Load the image onto your laser machine. It might be a good idea to do a trial on a piece of scrap wood to make sure it looks like it should and that the size is really what you need. A bit of trial and error will be needed to figure out the speed and laser power needed for your laser to etch the fruit with your desired look. A light etch will show the white rind and a heavy etch will reveal the plump orange segment under the rind. For good internal lighting you will want to blast all of the rind away.

Step 4: Assemble Electronics

The following components were used to light the guts of the orange (that wants to be a pumpkin):

10mm white LED
360 ohm resistor
9 volt battery snap
9 volt battery

You can purchase the items in my store as listed or get them at any other electronic store such as Radio Shack.

To make the circuit simply solder the resistor to the long lead of the LED, then connect the red battery snap wire to the free end of the resistor. Finally solder the black wire to the short lead of the LED. Now when a battery is connected your LED will light.

Step 5: Cut a Hole and Insert Electronics

Using your knife carefully cut a hole just a bit smaller than the 10mm diameter of the LED directly opposite the site to light. Slide your LED into the hole being careful not to insert the bare LED leads into the hole. As an optional step some heatshrink could be used to protect the bare leads on the LED. If they are cut short as shown they should be fine if you are careful though.

Step 6: Take Lots of Pictures of Your Cool Mini Pumpkin

Attach your 9 volt battery to let the fun being. To get the really bright pictures you will need to take the pictures in a dark room with a long exposure. It looks great as it is but with the long exposure it really enhances the natural color of the fruit since the LED we are using is pure white you can see that all of the color is from the orange. They look really cool even in natural light also. :)

This Instructable is entered into the Epilog Contest. Getting the smaller laser would be great since it would allow me to work on smaller items and not have them fall through the big slats on the current laser bed I have. The Epilog looks like it can also draw very detailed work, I would like to see how detailed it can get.