New Torch Wall
Added 2022-03-31 19:47:18 +0000 UTC
It's been a long time since the first release of a torch wall. First time I released one was in 2015, so an update was badly needed. The new update has a ton more utility, and is substantially easier to assemble.
- Every wall now offers torches, 1x - 4x, and this approach is much easier to migrate to curved/diagonal/etc.
- Every wall has 3 connector options, low, mid and high, so you can select how high in the wall you want the connectors.
- The torch wall now uses a standardized connector, making assembly dramatically easier.
- The torches are removable, so you can switch colors, or use the connector for future electrification projects
- There are loose and tight fitting versions. My printer can fit the connector into the tighter version, and as a result can be seated without glue, which is good for future maintainability, but if your printer has trouble with tight tolerances, try the loose versions.
To build one of these:
- Print the wall you want, a base (use the old base design to give yourself a little more space to play with if doing a 2x2 tile), and the matching floor that is cut for walls. Also print the torch. There's two torch versions, the textured one is better on a resin printer. If you have only FDM, both can work, but the older, untextured torch is easier to print on FDM.
- Paint the tile and glue it, except for the wall.
- Take one of the 2 pin dupont cables and cut it in half. Feed it through the hole. When the wire is out of the other side, pull it snug to get the connector fully into the wall. If you look at the photo above, you can see that the connector goes fully inside the wall. You will always want the cable to have the red and black wires the same on every tile you make. With the wall facing me, I put the red (power) on the left, and black (ground) on the right.
- Strip some insulator off the end of the cable, long enough that you can feed it through the holes in the lily pad battery holder. Red goes to +, Black to -. I tend to strip off about an inch so that I can feed the wire through and then wrap it/tie it to make it secure.
- Test the LED in the socket. The longer of the two wires should go in the red side of the connector. Once that's tested and it works, feed the LED through the torch body, test it again, and glue it down. I also prefer to file the plastic top to scar it up to make it better at diffusion. Finally I like to hot glue on the LED and shape that into a bit of a flame. Test it in the socket again.
- Once it all works, you can start trimming the wire from the LED so it sits snug against the wall. Remember, you can't cut something to be longer, so trim it a little at a time and test until the torch can sit snug against the wall.
- Remove the battery holder, and then glue the wall into place on the tile, ensuring the wire makes it inside the middle of the base.
- Now, you can choose to feed it out through one of the clip holes, or trim it down and re-attach the battery holder. There's a photo above showing how I fit the lilypad inside the base.
- Finally, if you have any problems, come chat in the openforge discord and we should be able to help you out.
Here's the set of gear I recommend:
Also useful
- Hot Glue Gun (Used to cover LED and sculpt flame)
- Mini Files (For scraping up the LED surface for better diffusion)
A lot of the design on this was done in collaboration with one of my patrons, Schadow. Schadow came up with the dupont connector idea, and has even come up with a multi-tile wiring scheme that works with the new torch wall. Thanks Schadow!
Grab the files: