Lite Bright +

So, one of the many gifts girl child got from everyone for her birthday was a Light Bright. Well a modern version of it with the same name. The light bright of my childhood was this massive behemoth that contained a nice incandescent light bulb that kept it warm enough that it could be used as an easy bake oven. The point is, even with moderate lighting in the room, you could still see what you were doing.

This new Lite Bright is a pale reflection of its glory days. The overall design on the outside is nice. It's lite and easy to move and uses batteries (which in and of itself is a pro and con). Plus there is a black punch area where you put the pins that is a self closing rubber. That, sadly, is where the good ends. The chief problem is that inside there are only 4 LEDs lighting the entire thing. With even the smallest amount of light in the room you can't even see that it is on.

So what am I to do? Sure we could return it, but the real problem is that it needs more lighting inside, otherwise its a good solid set of bones. The only real sacrifice here is that in order to substantially improve the lighting without adding a ton of weight in batteries, I need to change it from battery to plugin. But honestly I was perfectly happy with it being plugged in as a child, I'm hoping she will too. 

The first order of business was dis-assembly.  Taking it apart was quite simple thankfully with 8 screws holding it together.  1 of which was inside the battery compartment.

So we have here the 4 LEDs, a small micro-controller, and a white background using for reflecting the light.  Next step here is to remove pretty much all of that except the white background.

Next up was to add something that I could adhere the new LED light strip to.  I had some .09"  acrylic from my work on the router vacuum mod.  I cut up 4 strips real quick and set them in to test.

The pieces weren't perfect, but given what their purpose was, it was ok. (not a fan of doing this kind of thing in my projects, but I didn't want to use up all my left over acrylic on it).

Next I needed to bore out some space for a new switch since I wasn't going to be using the controller board anymore.  (Thought I took a picture of this step, but I didn't...)  After getting that right, I adhered the 4 panels to the structure with a combination of super glue for the flat areas and some caulking for the not flat areas.  Then I set the lights in.

Next up was soldering the switch in after making sure it would fit.  (temporarily I used a plug that I could screw tighten the wires on.)

Fast forward a week while waiting for a proper plug for the power.  I had planned on grabbing one from the local radio shack after I found I had no more of them, but as it turns out my Radio Shack has already been closed due to their bankruptcy stuff. 

Got the button, plug, and lights all wired up.

During testing I found that the button had a habit of being a little sticky and also very loose when the button was in the on position.  To combat this, I added a small spring around the button.

When all put back together, the only external difference is the addition of the plug.  Otherwise it looks just like it did before.

 

And of course, testing it to see how it looks.  Now taking pictures of something that produces light is devilishly tricky, so it actually is brighter in the pictures than it really is.  That said, it is now plenty bright enough to be seen in a room with average lighting.  (and it looks great if it is dark).

Now, the light bright itself was like 15$.  The new light strip was 30$, the button 1$, the plug 0.50$, and power brick was 7$.  But now the toy actually functions like it should, not the cheap revision that this thing is.

Custom Router Vacuum Attachment Part 1

I've been planning to do quite a bit of wood working over the coming months and some of it using MDF.  If you've ever worked with MDF, you know that cutting or routing it throws dust everywhere.  It shows up in places you didn't even know that dust could get to.  Now I have 2 routers, a table-mounted one and a non-table-mounted one.  The non-table-mounted one is very old, at least for a power tool.  Probably 2000 or 2001. (though it could be several years older)  That said, it is still in good working condition and does the job I need it to.

It is missing 2 features I wish it had.  The first is variable speed. There isn't much for that, it doesn't have it, that's life.  The other feature is a lack of a dust collection port.  This one is more important to me.  My garage pulls double duty as a car port and shop, so things that reduce the amount of dust I'm putting out while working are welcome.  Given the tool's age, there isn't much out there that will do the job of adding the dust collection to it.  To that end, I'm attempting to build my own system that will do the job.

 

So first we start out with the router itself.  There is a normal base not shown here that I'm going to replace.  Firing up LibreCAD, I started to the work of designing the pieces.  I knew I wanted to build it out of acrylic.  It is what I had on hand and I have done work in acrylic before (Custom Acrylic Submerged PC ).

There were 3 pieces to build.  The bottom (top left), middle (top right), and top (bottom left).  The center hole is, as you might guess, where the bit goes.  There is then a channel that sits in the middle out to a hole on the top.  The notion here is that the vacuum goes in the top hole and pulls through that channel.  (this is the step where I wish I had a CNC Milling machine, but sadly those are expensive and I'm trying to save myself 200$, not 2000$ :) ).

At this point the first order of business was to create a template in plywood that I could use to create all 3 of the pieces.  Most of the template I cut with the router except the straight parts with I did by hand with a jigsaw.  There is a little bit of a bend on the inside channel, but since it is going to be sandwiched in between I wasn't terribly concerned.  (Since this is a prototype experiment anyway.).

I then added a few holes to use as a clamping method to cut out the acrylic.  This was done entirely with a router and a flush bit that is designed for doing acrylic. (Same bit I used on the case I built).  I used a hole saw for the larger holes on the left and right.

Then all that was left was to drill new holes that match the old one and put it together to see how it all fit.

After fitting, I took a blow torch to all the sides to polish it and give it a shiny finish.  Then attached it to the router and stuck the vacuum port on it. To test fit.

That looked pretty good I thought.  The only problem was that the vacuum attachment was slightly smaller than what it said it was when I bought it. (Supposed to be 1.25" but was closer to 1.2" at the base due to a taper).  I put a line of silicon and put it back in and let it set.

Unfortunately this is where I'm stuck at now.  I tried attaching the hose, but found that the pulling stress was too much which yanked the vacuum attachment right out.  So I'm currently considering how best to combat this.  I have a couple of thoughts.  My first is to get a piece of acrylic tube that has an inside diameter of 1.25" and another piece of 1/4" acrylic and weld the tube to that piece and then that piece to the top where the outside hole is.  This would give a longer place to put the hose in.  The other option is similar but include somehow bending the tube 90 degrees to reduce the amount of stress the vacuum hose adds.

Right now I'm just not sure where to go next with it.