Mario

"Stained Glass"

Illuminated Display

I have a friend that loves everything Nintendo and his birthday was approaching, so when I got an assignment in my Mechatronics Fundamentals class, I took the opportunity to make this gift.

The assignment was this:

Use a microcontroller to make something that has a timer.

So, I did. The task was rather open ended, so the possibilities were endless. The lighting system has several timer related functions, so I passed that assignment with flying colors (literally).

PRocess

The first challenge was to make the "stained glass."
For this, I used sheets of acrylic and cut them on my 90 watt CO2 CNC laser.

I found an image that I wanted to use online, then I loaded it into Adobe Illustrator and began modifying it for my purposes.

All of the lines in the drawing had to be widened by offsetting from their centers, then making them all interconnected shapes. From there, the image was saved as a .svg file and loaded into my laser cutting software.
The shape was cut out of black acrylic, then glued onto a sheet of clear acrylic.

I mixed the required colors into a series of epoxy resin batches, then carefully filled each shape.

The result turned out to be a fantastic imitation of stained glass!

I used NeoPixel strips for lighting, ran the control from a microcontroller, and powered it with four AA batteries. I also wanted to make a custom circuit board, because I just thought it would be fun. It was! I used a blank, single sided circuit board, painted the copper side, then used my laser to remove any paint that was not part of the traces. This left a painted pattern on the copper to serve as mask. I soaked it in an acid etching solution, which removed all the copper that wasn't masked. The last step was to drill the holes and cut it out.

Next, came the 3D printed parts. I designed a case for the electronics. The PCB I made and the wires fit exactly as I designed it.

The stand was a simple design, printed with a honeycomb infil and no top or bottom layers.

Finally, everything was assembled in a shadowbox!

See it working here!

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse