It's another video with a built-in script for printing off custom lamp covers and it's the latest version. It's tweaked and tuned is uh, very nice. It's working out very well, so let me show you what this is all about. Having made some lamp caps in the past for Christmas lights I Thought it'd be really nice to get some bases like this E10 Bas and actually make a lamp that can go into that.

So if I grab a USB power supply because this is designed for 5 volts, ignore the numbers written this it was uh for logging its capacity over time as it uh, decreased, you'll see it's not. It's not going to compete with the studio lights here, but it is a nice little self-contain light with a soft glue inside and you could make a string of 5V uh lights like that. In fact, I have 3D printed experimentally at base to actually hold the Uh lamps for the full sort of uh string of Christmas lights experience. But that is just uh work in progress because I've realized that if I'm going to go that far then I might as well potentially uh, just put a socket so you can plug an LED in and just push the cap on.

So get rid of the Edison screw type bases. However, if you want some of the Edison screw type bases, I'll provide a link to a seller on AliExpress cuz I I Really hunted for a long time to find these. It's very easy to find the holder they go into, but not the actual bit that goes into the holder. the bit that goes onto the lamp that is uh, one of my studio lights just entering disco mode as they occasionally do so the script will let you choose lots of variables.

I Think the best thing to do here is to show you the script and what you can do. So for a start, the lamp housing here is based on an LED inserted into the housing like this. Let me just ease this this out and you can see the LED in there and what I've done is I've sorted a 150 Ohm resistor onto the positive lead of the LED. It doesn't specifically have to be any lead in particular, but I chose the resistor to go down to the bottom of the contact here and the negative to go onto the shell because it just seems logical to have that end positive and the shell set of negative.

and if you solder the uh 150 ohm resistor onto the positive lead like this, it means you can then put that through the bottom solder The Blob of solder over the end and then I recommend that light is starting to kny me, it's it's increasing in frequency. I'm going to have to change its driver not to worry but um, when you've actually slid it in and sold it into position, do it. So this uh, bent up lead is just touching the side of the case then I recommend getting the soldier iron and sort of heating the outside of the case while just touching a bit of solder and inside a bit. Fumbly, but you'll get there.

The other option is just to bend the lead up and then just wedge the lead against the side of the case with the lamp. and uh, when you're making the lamp covers the bulb covers. you can choose the diameter to be a nice friction fit to whatever cap you use. Uh, It's also worth mentioning if you notice there's some stripey colored ones here.

The reason for these is because my printer has that put they call a Bowden tube. It's the bit the filament gets fed down I Just cut loads of random Stripes of color and just stuff them down the end and then use the Uh the main set of filament to actually just shove them down through the print head just to get multiple layers of color including this very oddd uh, clear and black one I Don't even know if that's showing up too. Well, right? Let's get on to the housing itself and the changes that I've made. and then I'll show you the script, but the script is included Down Below in the description.

It's not an STL file. The reason for that is I Can't give you an Sttf file because that's not, doesn't have variables, this has variables. Oh, it's also worth mentioning if you like the little uh, low voltage LED Strings like this sort of ones, you can just make cap that fits over those if you want to use it with standard traditional uh Tung type ones. I'm not sure about the tungsten because I'd be quite worried about the heat, but technically speaking you can make it fit over.

but I would kind of recommend only using with low power lights I don't think I've cleared that out inside after I've printed it. hold on I'll try it with one of the other ones that I probably have cleared out. there. we go.

um I'll show you the clearing bit about bit afterwards. uh but it will work but uh, the traditional one wat lamps get very hot I think these are half watt which means it's less like to get too hot but it is pla plastic. it's low temperature. um and there's no ventilation.

it just could actually melt these just uh, keep that in mind if you try it. just keep an eye on things. uh. the other option is to convert these to LED using Brid Direct Fir and current limiting and then the Uh LEDs in each position.

I've made videos about that before and it lets you reduce the power consumption of the set to a considerably lower level and use whatever caps you like. Let's take a look at the script. One other scalable aspect: you can scale the Uh lamps up. You can also choose how many facets they have.

This is a six faceted one and it's also got another variable that you can actually turn into diamond shape. There is a round equivalent version of that, that one which is of diamond shape. Um, and there's another extreme example where you can actually put the round ball at the end and it creates this sort of vintage tube type shape. Uh, you can go to extremes.

Uh, when it goes square I'm going to have to rewrite the script for this I Think because it it kind of like makes a sort of cubb Light which is interesting its own right. This, it's completely scalable. You can choose the thickness of the wall. H I Chose just one layer of plastic thick and uh, this is in a standard screw in light, scaled up.

It's the same script. but do downsize the power rating of these lamps if you're going to use that that because, uh, this one's been scaled down to one watt just to keep the temperature sensible and avoid melting the plastic. Again, it's all about not melting the plastic. So things that have changed in the script: the way it's designed.

it's got the base that you choose the outer diameter. The reason that it's selectable for the outer diameter is it was originally written to actually allow to choose to measure the inside of that, tell their script that that was the size and then put it in once you finished printing is because the first layer creates a slight squish, what they call the elephant foot. You have to take a fou and just fou around here to actually get that slight lift off. There is a way to avoid the elephant foot type effect, but it doesn't work with a single wall of plastic very well.

Likewise, like I did with the other one there, if you're slipping over another lamp holder, it's best to just basically ream it about like that inside. I didn't do it that with other one, which is why it kind of was a tight fit until I just squished it too hard there not to worry. So things have changed. the original script.

uh, had straight lines coming down here, but I've now changed it. It's got the software has what they call a hull command and it joins multiple shapes. So this is a sphere. This is a smaller sphere at the tip and then there's a ring here and it just creates a hull around the outside and uh, then by creating two of those, one solid and then one cutting out the inside.

That's what creates the shape of this and it also gives the the result of that shape. like the diamond shape is this ball position being moved within it and the facets is just telling it how many facets the ball has and that gives it hexagonal effects like this. Uh, the base here. H Once you've chosen outside diameter, it will automatically cut out the inside diameter depending on how thickness of the wall you want is Cu, you can choose that, but it also adds a very slight wedge here, a little taper so that when you stuff it over the top of a lamp holder, it basically it will only go so far.

It won't actually just slide right in. That also strengthens the area of that joint, which is good. Uh, let me show you the script and variables you can adjust. Now, don't be put off by this if you're new to 3D printer.

Even if you're seasoned veteran of 3D printing, let me scroll down. well. let's Zoom down in this a little bit and I'll show you important things in this script. This is written in open Scad.

that's why, uh, I can actually put it down in the description down below. It's literally you can copy and paste into the free software called Op Scad or Open Escad and uh, it works on a script written sort of like program so to speak and you can adjust variables in it. And once you've adjusted the variables, once you've designed your light and you can see what it's going to look like, then you can then create the STL file that you then use in whatever program you use typically Cura for converting it to use with your printer. If you've not got a printer at the moment, something like this may nod you in the direction of buying one because they're very useful for creating practical technical objects.

Now, this is a very fast print. These shells are completely Hollow and they're mostly just one layer of plastic thick. Typically the nozzle a printer will be 04. So one of the variables down here is wall equals 0.4 and that, uh, you can choose If you want it to be a bigger, stronger lamp, you could choose another layer.

You could say make it 08 make the lamp much thicker and uh, harder if you do that. Uh, remember, if you want to place it over the outside of a cap, you because it's sized for the outside of this, you're going to have to deduct the wall thickness, but you can work that out yourself. It's a very fast print. Uh, now.

Cura lets you by default it's active that, uh, when it builds. If it's printing too fast, it will stop between layers just to let the last layer cool down. That results a change. If you're printing something clear, it goes Frosty at that point.

So I turn that off or set it to zero or whatever it is. But this prints so fast that it does cause problems with the plastic going a bit squishy because uh, it is. Really, it's like 3 minutes to 10 minutes to print one of these. So I recommend actually lowering the speed of the print I Normally have mine at 80 mm but I lower it to 40 mm per second just to print these caps just if it all goes a bit floppy as I say I've left some notes in the script here.

Now there are three main variables. The one is the the first one is the outside diameter of the base in this case 9.8 because that was designed for these which are 9 mm diameter and the two layers of the wall which is4 which is adds up to 08. The base lip is the bit at the bottom. here.

it's this uh bit that sticks down. if you make it 3 mm, it will just be a tiny little lip if you make it what this one is which is 8 mm. It gives a nice deep lip, but you can make it any length you want. Uh, the lamp size is the diameter of the globe itself.

Here the biggest diameter uh which only really works for the the Spheres When you start doing things like um, hexagonal caps, it will be slightly smaller because it's working within that sphere and those are the three main variables to adjust. However, if you want to go further, you can adjust the facets. Normally it's set 100 which is the round lamp uh, the wall point4. You can thicken that up if you wish.

The tip is the tip sphere uh, that's default set at five and the shape 1.7 You can use variables between point7 to 1.7 1.7 is the standard Globe shape like this with the sphere down at the bottom and the 7 is way up at the top. Uh, like where is it like that one and the diamond is a one. It's kind of right. Bang the middle of those two things.

Worth mentioning: This is a script that I could actually have done a customizer, but I haven't done that yet because I tend to write these scripts for myself so to speak and then share them. Uh, but you can change these variables in here. but make sure you leave the equals at the left hand side and the little semicolon at the right hand side because you are changing a bit in a program and if you mess up with that, if you accidentally delete that, then the program it won't may not be able to compile the light once you've got your light. uh, your variables put in.

There are a couple of buttons. Press one has two little forward arrows on it. It's also echoed down here and that is the fast build. It just roughly renders it to show you what it's going to look like and then you can use them.

Grab it with the cursor of the mouse and you can pan around and look inside and everything. Once you're happy with it, press the one with the hourglass um which is also echoed down here and it will take a bit longer. It depends on the processing power of your computer is doing a lot of mathematical computations courtesy of the Open ES CAD Wizards especially the the lines are joining these holes together, the hole around these objects and, uh, it will take a while, but then it will make that Ding and it'll appear and then you can press the STL button and save it as the STL file and then use it in the slicer of your choice. a slicer Being a bit of software that just adapts these manufacturing files into the layers needed for your printer to print it in lots of layers.

Um, and that is about it. It's one of things that people are sometimes put off buying 3D printers by the videos that show the geeky channels, the geeky 3D printing channels that don't just get the printer, they all fine tune and hack and mod it and so on and that's not needed. You can buy the printer, follow the instructions, set it up, look at videos about it, and uh, then you can just start printing straight away. Don't get too technical initially because uh, in most instances, those people are just looking for perfect high-speed prints.

We're just looking for the objects that we want and you know it doesn't matter if there's a slight imperfection, we can fine-tune that later on as we learn the printer, but that is it. Um, the new script which is down in the description down below I'll also provide the link to these little caps. and I'll also be working on some other versions of this that may not even need that cap if you kind of want to. I Just did this because you know well I could I Thought it would look quite neat to make custom lamps with a little threaded uh inserts the lamp holders, but there we go.

That is it. Enjoy the script. Let me know what you think of it in the comments down below.