hi guys welcome back to Lu's 3D Studio today I'll be showing you guys how to make 3D printed LED signs at the end of the tutorial you'll be able to make personalized LED signs like these for this tutorial let's make this like LED sign so let's get right to it now you are going to use this software Autodesk Fusion 360 in case that you don't want to spend any money to buy the software you can just get the free version like I did you need to go through the tiring registration process though but just take your time I promise you it's worth it then you need to decide on which font do you want to use for your LED sign Google fonts is my goto website to search for free fonts there are so many types of fonts to choose from just for some quick tips you want your sign to pop so choose a font that's like super thick something like Poppins black or Balo black in this case let's use this public sense black font for our LED sign I'm going to hit download extract it and install it on my computer to install a font on a Mac simply double click click on it and click install and prompted it will be installed automatically on your Mac now you want to find a picture of the thumbs up icon on the internet and then go to this website you want to convert the picture to SVG so upload your pictures choose SVG and then hit convert once it's finished hit download and save it on your computer now you want to open Fusion 360 click create sketch you'll then be prompted to choose any of the three planes I'm going to choose this XC plane for now I like to start with sketching a rectangle which is going to be a reference for the size of our sign I want my LED sign to be about 300 mm wide and20 mm high now hover to create and choose the text tool type in the text that you want for your sign resize the text as necessary and change the font style let's find our new installed font in the drop- down list here if it doesn't show up try to restart your computer after installing the new font now we're not going to need the rectangle anymore so so let's delete that select the textt right click on it and select explode text this will create the outlines around the letters Green Line means that they are constrained we need to change the lines to Blue so we can edit the letters click the lock icon and select everything this will change the outlines to Blue it is then possible to move them around alter their shapes or even rotate them now let's add that thumbs up icon next to our like LED sign hover to insert select insert SVG and find the picture that we've converted just now you may want to rescale the picture by dragging this inward or outward and move it to your desired position you also want to change the green lines to Blue next select the whole text and hit command C or control C on PC to copy the text now hover to construct and select offset plane select the plane with your text on it type in 100 m and hit okay now you want to select that new plane you just created and right click on it select create sketch hit command V or control V on a PC to paste the text that we've copied just now now I'm just going to rename our sketch layers real quick now let's hide the second sketch layer by clicking this eye icon right click on our original sketch layer and select edit sketch select the letters and click the offset button in the top toolbar you can then Define the thickness of the offset which is entirely up to you but you want the offsets of each character to overlap let's make the other offset 10 mm thick do the same thing with the thumbs up icon now I like to delete the lines that I don't need so you can use the trim tool to do that deleting these lines will make it easier for us to work on each character now I like to draw line lines to separate each character since we're going to have to print each letter individually you can also skip this tab and create the whole thing as one part and cut it in the slicer later but I like to do it here since I have more freedom next let's create the offset on the inner side of the letters and let's make it 1.2 mm thick do the same thing to the rest of the characters then click finish sketch once you've created the offsets we are ready to design the base which is going to house the LED strip now click the extr button we're going to work on one character at a time and let's start with the thumbs up icon select everything and type in 1 mm this will be the back wall thickness of the base and let's hide that by clicking the IE icon and make our sketch visible Again by clicking this ey icon here click extrude again and select the outer border type in 30 mm click the I icon to make the 3D model visible again set the operation to join and click okay now let's extr the thin borders hide the 3D model click extrude select the thin borders extrude 20 mm up click the ey icon and set the operation to join and click okay that will create these narrow edges on the inside of the base now you want to do the same thing with the rest of the L letters before I forget let's create holes where the letters connect so we can pass the LED strip through them go back to original sketch right click on it select edit sketch and draw some rectangles where the letters connect click extrude select all the areas of the rectangles make the 3D models visible again choose offset type in 1 millimeter extrude about 15 millim up make sure the operation is set to cut and click okay you also want to create a hole at the back of the base where the LED strip goes into now let's create the diffusers or the caps for the characters let's hide the original sketch and 3D model by clicking these ey symbols right click on the second sketch layer and select edit sketch then let's create the first inner offset which is going to be 1 mm thick then we want to create a very thin Second inner offset which is 0.1 mm thick this will ensure that the Caps will be slightly smaller than the holes so they'll have some wiggle room because you don't want the Caps to fit in too tightly I'm going to zoom this in so you will get a better picture on how to do this first click off set select the letter and create the first 1 mm thick inner offset then click offset select the letter again and create the second 0.1 mm thick inner offset once you're done hit finish sketch now click extrude and select all the areas except for the outermost 0.1 mm border extrude 20 mm downward and click okay then click extr it again you want to select the innermost area select offset type in 0.4 mm extrude 20 mm downward or all the way down and click okay the Caps are the diffusers will look something like this now do the same thing with the rest of the characters now that we're done designing our 3D models let's export all the parts as separate STL files to export a part in STL select it right click on it select save as mesh set the format to STL binary and click okay then you can save it to your computer now I'm going to use bambo Studio slicer to slice then print the sign it seems that I can fit in at least two characters on the plate so I'm going to import two letters and print them as one part I'm also going to print these with this support turned on for the L sign I'm going to use this matte pla filament from sunlu now let's load our blue filament and head over to our slicer then you want to slice that hit print and send it to our printer you can use the filaments of any brand and color but you might want to consider using a darker color for the base that will make your sign pop even more I'm using my A1 mini printer from bamboo lab so the print volume is rather small if you have a printer that has a bigger print volume you could probably fit in more letters on the plate now let's remove the support for the holes I'm going to use super glue to attach these letters let's install the LED strip ideally you want to get a self adhesive LED strip peel off the plastic backing and stick the LED strip to to the inner wall of the base it's quite tricky to install it if your sign is small so try to design a bigger LED sign or enlarge it by scaling it up in the slicer you also don't want to chip out on the LED strip you want to get an LED strip that has at least 30 LEDs per meter now let's print the Caps I'm using a smooth Bei plate to print the caps but it's not that big of a deal if you're using the textured Pi plate next you want to insert the Caps we've made the Caps to be 0.1 mm thinner than the holes so it's super easy to insert them now let's plug in everything and watch our sign comes to life if you get an RGB LED light strip you could even change the color of the lights using a remote or even an app which is a great feature to have but in such case that you don't don't need all that fancy stuff you could even just create a simple sign like this subscribe sign using the same method and speaking of subscribe make sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't and leave a like if you find this helpful have fun making your own 3D printed LED sign and I'll see you next time