DIY pinball-style lights for recessing into wooden surfaces

Описание: This project turned out even better than expected. It was inspired by the lights used in pinball machine playfields, where coloured inserts are illuminated from behind.

I've attached two scripts at the bottom of this description. If copied and pasted into openscad they can be used to create custom versions with the following adjustable variables:-

Outer diameter of the insert (all measurements in millimetres)
Depth of main disk
thickness of front layer of plastic. Thicker = stronger/diffused and allows sanding flush
diameter of LED
length of the LED support measured from the front

There are two versions:-
Star, which has eight radial lines and is the strongest version.
Concentric, which has a series of fresnel style lenses to spread the light.

I recommend printing these in transparent/natural PLA to allow maximum light transmission. I've not tried coloured transparent PLA yet. They print very fast with a small amount of filament. For example 20mm=1g, 25mm=1.5g, 30mm=2g, 40mm=3g, 50mm=4g, 75mm=7.5g.

You can fit a standard LED with suitable resistor like 150 ohm for powering lots of these in parallel from a standard USB power supply. Self colour changing LEDs look good, as do self flashing ones. You could size the LED holder to take an addressable LED string pixel.
You could also animate the light in the style of a pinball feature effect.

Diffused LEDs are best to get a softer spread of light through the insert.

For drilling the holes, a plunge drill or router will give a clean vertical hole to a repeatable depth.

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The openscad scripts are below. You can copy and paste the selected script into openscad, and adjust the variables at the top to fine tune sizing to your requirements before making into an STL file.

Here's the star script:-

//Pinball style star LED insert
$fn=100;
//You can adjust the variables below
size=25; //diameter of insert in mm
depth=5; //depth of insert
face=1; //thickness of front face
led=5.2; //diameter of LED
stem=15; //length of LED stem
//don't adjust anything below here
difference(){
union(){
difference(){
union(){
//main disk
cylinder(h=depth, d=size);
}
//internal cylinder
translate([0,0,face])
cylinder(h=depth,d=size-2);
}
//star fins
for (i=[0:36:350])rotate([0, 0, i]){
translate([0,-.5,face])
cube([(size/2)-1,1,depth-face]);
}
//LED pillar
cylinder(h=stem,d=led+2);
}
//led hole
translate([0,0,face])
cylinder(h=stem+1,d=led);
}


And here's the concentric circles script:-

//Pinball style fresnel LED insert
$fn=100;
//You can adjust the variables below
size=25; //diameter of insert in mm
depth=5; //depth of insert
face=1; //thickness of front face
led=5.2; //diameter of LED
stem=15; //length of LED stem
difference(){
//main disk
cylinder(h=depth, d=size);
//internal cylinder
translate([0,0,face])
cylinder(h=depth,d=size-2);
}
//concentric rings
for (i=[0:4:size-8]){
difference(){
cylinder(h=face+1, d=size-i-1.5);
cylinder(h=face+1.1, d=size-i-3.5);
}
}
//LED pillar
difference(){
cylinder(h=stem,d=led+2);
//led hole
translate([0,0,face])
cylinder(h=stem+1,d=led);
}