Illuminated "Never Forget Dinosaurs" Sign

Introduction

I stumbled on “Maker Tales” video where he made some 3d printed marquee letters. Although I did not use his scripts, I liked the design so much that I wanted to try this myself. I therefore made this object that honors the classic never forget dinosaur meme. Here you can see it in action:

What you need

1. Soldering iron
2. 5V LED Strip (I used this one)
3. Neon Dinosaur (I used this one)
4. Spare USB charger
5. Hot Glue gun
6. optional: Switch (example)
7. optional: Magnet wire for easy connection of LED Strip (I used this one)

How to make it

Disclaimer: Making this involves a bit of tinkering, if you are a very impatient person, this is probably not for you. 🕊

1. Print out the files (obviously)

I used matte PLA with standard 0.16mm settings from my Bambu Labs printer. Print the diffusor caps with 100% infill.

2. Wire things up:

• Put the LED strip through the hole in the back of the base plate and cut it where needed to fill the whole sign.
• Solder the individiual segments together using the magnet wire
• Check if everything lights up as expected
• Remove any molten plastic where you touched the edges so that the top part will align well. 

3. Put the diffusor caps inside the top part. Find the z-Position you like most by checking how it looks with illumination. Use a caliper to get the same z-Position for all letters. I used 3mm distance from top (gray) to diffusor (yellow). For the letters that have a whole (O, R), first put the middle whole part in the diffusor, before putting the whole diffusor inside the big part.

4. Glue together base and top

5. Electrically connect the dinosaur cable to the LED Strip cable (e.g. by using a switch as I did). 

6. Hot glue the dinosaur to the top of the sign. The model has small recesses that fit the dinosaur feet for this. You may also hide the dinosaur cables by hot gluing the to the back and remove the wall mount plastic from the dinosaur using pliers.

7. Connect to USB charger and enjoy. 💡🦕

Improvements

Although I am quite happy with the result there is still lots of room for improvements, which I noticed on the way:

• Alignment pins for bottom and top part. Detachable parts would be best, in case repair job becomes necessary
• Soldering the LED strips is very tedious and you get to touch the plastic a lot. Maybe there is a better way for this
• The diffusor caps required quite large force during assembly. Clearance should probably be larger. However you also do not want to have gaps so that light shines throught the edges.