Introduction: 3D Printed Book Reading Lamp DIY

About: Founder of letsmakeprojects.com...Sciency Guy who always try to make innovative projects,check out what i made in my instructable..

Hey readers welcome again to my other instructable, This project is specially made for book lovers who love reading books and also for students!

When I was in my learning phase I used to read a lot of books, Back then there was no such technology or availability of electronics you could say, I dreamt of making such lights that would shed light only on the book.

Now you might ask me why make a reading book lamp when you can already read books with the room light or table lamps, The answer for this is simple, Other lamps are large in size, consume more power, and shred light in the unwanted areas.

This book reading lamp is small, Made using 3d printed parts, Light in weight, and has a large backup time of about 6 hours on a full charge and upon continuous reading.

One other advantage of this lamp is it can be easily clipped to any page and the charging is very simple, just connect the charging cable and other end to any USB port, the charging time is less than 36 minutes.

It uses a 1w bright mix of yellow and white LED that gives out decent light for reading. Well by now you might already thought of building this one for yourself.

Well you can, below i will be going through all the steps that I followed to build this amazing reading light

Supplies

1W SMD Led

Tp 4056 charging board

On and Off switch

Small lithium polymer battery

Small cables for connections

USB cable(check for port type on charge board)

3D printer from here

PLA filament(color of your choice)

Tinkercad

Book that you will be going to read!

Step 1: Tinkercad Design and Slicing

I designed this Reading lamp on my own using Tinkercad , I recommend you to try this if you want to get started into 3D printing.

There are 3 parts that was designed for this project and I have given links to all parts below, All you have to do is download the files, open in Cura Slicer and follow the settings.

I have not used any rafts of supports during slicing and you can apply the same settings too, Maintain infill rate between 20 and 40%.

Now prepare the machine for printing after you export the Gcode files to the SD card and then the printer.

Step 2: 3D Printing

I will be using PLA filament to print the things, I chose white, Red, and blue colors, and this choice of color is left to you.

It will not take much time to get all the parts 3d printed, In my case, it was close to an hour and the best part is the printed thing is ready to be used directly and there is no need for any post-processing.

The clip part needs to be printed like shown above since it has a very thin separating layer, If you have any overhangs just do a basic cleaning and then we can head over to the next step.


Step 3: Circuit Diagram

The circuit is very basic and simple if you already have experience with electronics, Here we need a total of 3 components.

  • Led
  • Switch
  • Battery
  • Tp 4056 aka battery charging module

The circuit is much of soldering only, We will connect the battery directly to the charging board followed by soldering the wires.

Output pins from the board will be connected to the LED and in between we are adding the switch, The switch is a general on and off and the smaller the switch the better.

This is all about the circuitry part for this project.

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Step 4: Building Circuit

After you have seen the circuit diagram we can begin with the soldering part, Remove the insulation of wire and solder the copper to the LED pins,

Make sure to solder this properly and not leave any overhanging solder, Repeat the same step for other side of the led pin too.

This LED already has heat dissipation plate at the bottom, This part should not touch the 3d printed frame directly so what you can do is add a drop of superglue on either sides and place the legs of LED on this glue.

This method creates a layer of airgap between the frame and plate of LED that helps in getting rid of heat from LED.

If there are suspending wire glue everything to the frame so there are no overhangs that might cause problems later,

Add the switch to the end of wires and then we can head over to the next steps.

Step 5: Battery Setup

This was a little complex for me and i will tell you why I'm saying this so that you can avoid this.

Initially i soldered thick wires to the battery and the charging board, this made the flexibly of wire go in vain and in return i faced issues when i added this part to the light stand.

Later i replaced those thick wires with thin and little longer ones, and this fixed all issues, After this we can solder the wires from the switch to the output pin of the charging board.

Now in the end use a drop of superglue on the backside of the clip and stick the charging board, Finally couple the led stand to the clip using superglue.

Step 6: Finishing and Testing

At this step our reading lamp is almost ready only one thing that is pending now is selecting which of your favourite book to read.

I took some of my time and selected all time favourite book, Test the light once by switching on the button.

If the LED is not bright, Put the battery for a.Full charge and wait for sometime, Now all you have to do is clip this light below set of pages that you will be reading.

You can also use this clip to mark set of pages that you will be reading today(only for beginner readers this is because the clip can hold 7 to 8 pages at once)

Adjust the place where you will be keeping this light, i chose on the top part of the book, you can place as per your needs.

After you complete reading develop the habit of charging the battery to full and keep it ready for next session!

Thats all for now, Thanks and also don't miss to check my video on this reading lamp.

Step 7: Working Video

Don't know how to clip this on the page of a book? Then I have attached a separate tutorial on how you can do this.

If you missed reading any steps just watch this video tutorial that will clear all your doubts, This was all about making this book reading light, Any other questions ask me in the comments, Have a great day, and happy reading :)

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