Geodesic LED Sphere

thingiverse

This is a design based on a geodesic sphere of either a 2V or 3V design. It is designed to use WS2811 Pixels Digital Addressable LED String Lights which are readily available on Amazon, Ebay or Aliexpress. These strips contain 50 LEDs. You will need one strip for the 3V sphere which holds 42 LEDs, and 2 strips for the 3V model which holds 92 LEDs. It uses 1/4 inch drip irrigation tubing. The tubing I used came from Home Depot. https://www.homedepot.ca/product/rain-bird-1-4-tubing-100-ft/1001493602 Other brands may have a slightly different internal diameter. To ensure a proper fit you can modify the diameter of the led bushing arms in the openscad file. It helps the heat the end of the tubing with a heat gun or hair dryer before installing on the LED bushing arms. ****** Building the 2V Dome. The 2v dome has a diameter of approx 230 mm. And has 42 LED bushings. Required: 12 5 arm LED bushings 30 6 arm LED bushings 60 A - struts - tube length = 49.1 mm. 60 B - struts - tube length = 41.0 mm. The best way to start construction is to install all the B struts on the 5 arm bushings and then proceed according to the diagram. ***** Building the 3V Dome. The 3V dome has a diameter of approx 345 mm. And has 92 LED bushings. Required: 12 5 arm LED bushings 80 6 arm LED bushings 60 A - struts - tube length = 38.0 mm. 90 B - struts - tube length = 47.5 mm. 120 C - struts - tube length = 49.1 mm. Install all the A struts onto the 12, 5 arm bushings. Next install all the C struts onto 20 of the 6 arm bushings and then proceed according to the diagram. ***** Note that the LED bushings for the 2V and 3V sphere are slightly different as they use a different angle of the arm to the bushing. ***** The LEDs can be secured to the bushing using hot-melt glue applied on the inside of the sphere. ***** Print Settings Layer Height 0.2 mm Infill Density 20% Generate Support - yes. Build Plate Adhesion Type: Brim ****** I controlled the LEDs using an ESP8266 chip and software obtained from: https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED ***** If you feel brave and want to change the size of the sphere you can use the files sphere_calculations_3v.scad or sphere_calculations_3v.scad. This will calculate the tubing lengths you will require for a sphere of a given diameter. The results will show up in the openscad console window when you click the “Render” button. Be warned that if you make the sphere too large the distance between the LED bushings could be too large to fit the LED String Lights. This design was inspired by https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4337281 This design provided the basis of the design and of the LED bushings and the tubing cutter. Credit should be given to http://www.desertdomes.com/ for providing information to calculate length of tubing.