J Channel pixel mounting clip for shingles

thingiverse

J Channel has emerged as a very clean looking and cheap way to mount pixel lights often used for Christmas lights and holidays. It can even be used to mount the pixel lights year round, without looking like you have Christmas lights up all the time. This is accomplished by drilling 7/16" holes in J channel at your desired spacing, then pushing the pixel lights through the back (the ones I use are ws2811 pixel bullets, but any of that 12mm shape will do). I wanted to do this and try mounting the J Channel to my roof line, including gable (triangle peak of roof). But I couldn't find a way to secure it to the roof area where is was extremely risky to work. I could find countless creative solutions on various 3d print sites for clips customized to work with different materials and sizes. Pretty much everything you could use for Christmas lights, there was a solution....except for J channel. None of them really worked very well with it. So I took a basic idea for a roof clip, and started testing versions of this. So I am sharing here my v4 J channel clip for shingles for use by all, and I absolutely would love to see some tweaks or changes done by anybody who thinks they can improve it. The challenge is to stop the J channel from sliding forward off the roof, but also sliding out the sides, all without crushing it. To make it easier to picture how it works, I've created an exact to scale replica of some J channel in tinkercad. I then inserted it into the tinkercad model at the link I shared to help demonstrate how it's used. They have been pretty reliable and tough even printed as draft quality, but if you are going to use them outside, they do feel that extra bit reliable with a slightly higher infill density and 3 walls instead of 2. Don't think you need to print them on very fine for good results, but don't go crazy pushing the speed because of the very small space between some areas. It can make it easy to joing pieces that should be independent. This thing was made with Tinkercad. Edit it online https://www.tinkercad.com/things/gB8E1rmsuUQ