LED Cube 8x8x8

Step 26 Build the cube: create the base

We didn't have any fancy tools at our disposal to create a fancy stand or box for our LED cube. Instead, we modified the template to work as a base for the cube.

We encourage you to make something cooler than we did for your LED cube!

For the template, we only drilled a couple of mm into the wood. To transform the template into a base, we just drilled all the holes through the board. Then we drilled 8 smaller holes for the 8 cathode wires running up to the 8 cathode layers.

Of course, you don't want to have your LED cube on a wood colored base. We didn't have any black paint lying around, but we did find a giant black magic marker! Staining the wood black with a magic marker worked surprisingly well! I think the one we used had a 10mm point.

Comments

[TechNotes]

Hi all. I'm a bit confused about how you wire up the cube.

If you have your 64 anodes going through the holes in the bottom and have your 8 cathodes on the sides (1 on each layer), how would you wire it to go into the smaller holes in the bottom?

Sorry if my wording sounds a bit confusing.

Thanks!

[longfinmako]

you need to solder wires from each layer of your cube down so they can be put trough the hole, these will go to the transistors to ground the layers of leds

[TechNotes]

Sorry, my wording was a bit weird. I meant to ask how you should wire up each layer so that it doesn't look really messed up with wires going down the side of your cube.

[jwestenberg]

Make 8 extra holes on the inside of the cube, just a few mm from the holes where your 64 anodes go through. Put some straight wire through these holes. The first wire has to be really short because it goes to the first layer, the second needs to be a bit longer and so on. Bend the tips of the straight wire so that the wire has gotten a little distance from the layers you don't want to connect it to.
Also see the first and second picture on step 28 and the second picture on step 29 to see what I mean. At first i was afraid you would notice this straight wire, but when I finished the cube i could see it doesn't show at all.

Good Luck finishing the project!

[TechNotes]

Thanks!