 Hey what's up folks, welcome back to another layer by layer in today's tutorial We're gonna take a look at how to make some neon signs with Neopixel LED strips So let's check out this week's project So if you head on over to the learn system for made of fruit You'll see our latest guide here is how to make these neon signs using these flexible neon like neopixel strips They're really nice to work with they have a very beautiful look and We created a couple of different signs for for the Halloween season. We made a ghost with some glasses a Wolf with with a moon in the background and a little green reaper holding a scythe So I just wanted to show you folks how I went about making and designing these in fusion 360 There's some design considerations that I think folks might benefit from so let's just kind of take a look First of all, I want to show you folks some of the things to consider when making your signs so the point of this one was to kind of make two separate LED strips that have individual animations and One of the things I found is it's very difficult to get the The Neopixel strip to fit into very tight corners So having really big corners and having really curvy shapes works kind of the best So that's one thing here another thing here is to have a integrated hook or a loop rather for a hook So you can hang it so that's one of the things to and also kind of combining adding these little kind of support structures to the individual elements here So that's the ghost one. Let's take a look at the wolf one For the wolf one. I added an extra support here around the nose area and connecting the the wolf to You know the moon and then on the bottom here You see I just have a straight line with some fillets here that connect these two elements there So kind of two different things If this piece here wasn't there you'd have a very kind of unsupported thing and it can flop around when you're moving it the Grim Reaper I actually if I were to print this again I would add a Support beam to this corner because this becomes a little bit floppy because there's only one piece here that connects Kind of the skull to the rest of the sign and this one's a little bit different. I had to add an extra kind of element here to create a Good spot for the hook and Then the last one here. I have I didn't actually print this one yet But just kind of to take a look at it. It's a pair of lips with these kind of vampire teeth If I were to print this out I would connect these two areas here and Oh, it looks like fusion doesn't let me select faces right now. There you go That ever happens just switch between tabs and then you can start selecting things again It's one of those ink. It's one of those bugs infusion. That's remained for several versions But if you're aware of it now, you know how to fix it Let's see another thing I like to do is to add fillets to these otherwise sharp edges here those aren't built into the Into the sketch. They're just kind of filleted after the extrusions are done and That's just kind of a quick look at those three shapes so now I'm going to make one kind of from scratch so I'll start with a new design and What I'm going to do is I like to create a sketch a reference sketch I'm going to start off on you know the floor plane because I'm going to be looking down on it and What I'll do is I'll make a giant rectangle just using the two-point rectangle. I'm going to make this You know, I'm thinking about my printer. It's 300 by 300 millimeters on the X and the Y I'm going to reduce that down to 280 because I want some extra room to work with Just in case something goes wrong So I tend to do that a lot. So 280 by 280 hit okay, and I kind of want to work with this In the center of our origin here And the best way for me to do that is to create two construction lines with some midpoint constraints So I'll roll over this edge here wait for that midpoint icon to show up click there and then I'll just kind of Create another line making sure it's got a perpendicular constraint And I'll just hit escape to end that there and then I'll bring up my sketch model toolbox And then I'll create a midpoint constraint from this point to this line over here And then I'll use the coincident and then I'll make this point go in the center of our origin And that's kind of it. I'll hit escape and then select these two lines make them construction lines with the hotkey X on my keyboard and then that's our reference point. I'll hit finish sketch because we're done with that So now we have a nice reference Sketch that will allow us to kind of stay within the bounds of our 3d printer bed Next up. I'm going to import an image using the canvas so under insert There's a little canvas thing or you can use your sketch model toolbox and just say can this I like doing that So I'll click on that There's a little option here insert from my computer. I'll click on that navigate to the thing you want I got this I found this image on iconfinder.com and I'm going to use that as a reference and I'm going to kind of draw this out And make that sign. So let's bring that in hit open. It's going to ask you where do you want this to be? I'll select the sketch. Why not it kind of auto Filled it in which is kind of nice, but you have these tools here These little handles to kind of scale it up or down if you'd like rotated it as well I Think that's pretty good. Maybe just make it tiny bit bigger That's too big I think the more you zoom in the more kind of Sensitive you can get it to be That's a little bit too small You could always change it after as well. So I hit okay. All right, so that's my reference image So my idea here is to kind of make two into two separate Elements for the for the neon sign and I'll join them together With with some extrudes and some some sketches But the the main technique that I use is I use a single line I'll draw out the single line as if it were the LED strip itself and Then I extruded out using the thin extrude. So let's kind of make a new sketch On the floor plane and I'll start off with like kind of this area here and then work my way out So with them I'm going to use the spline tool And it's got very very curvy, you know elements to it so I'll start off here with some points here and I'm just kind of gonna Click around into these points where I think it makes sense to add and Maybe here here and then I'll end it off here and then I'll hit the The checkbox or the check icon To finish it and then you'll notice that the the green Handles are present and we can move those manipulate those and They're Sometimes, you know less is more and I just want to show folks like if you start kind of moving these around I like to make these a little bit smaller because they tend to kind of be really really big and one of the things About this the spline tool and the splines themselves is they can be rather difficult to work with I've done a few tutorials before and It's always a bit of a challenge to Manipulate these and get the right shape that you want because as you move these around it's affecting all of the other Handles and points So keep that in mind as you're kind of making these so all I'm doing is just making these these these very large Handles just a little bit smaller because they feel like they're just too big and One thing you'll notice that as I make them smaller you're getting a lot of detail and The shape is becoming a little bit in my opinion a little bit jarring doesn't kind of quite look curvy like I want So now that I have this kind of shape I'm going to start deleting some of these Points because I think that's just too many. So for example the tummy here. I don't think I need two points I'm just gonna delete that once it's selected and then just move the next one over and then just kind of Bring that out. I'll do that with this foot as well Let me delete this piece of it and then kind of smooth this out bring this down And then kind of flare this out Maybe manipulate this one as well Let's do that here, too. And this is all you know, how you want your shape to be this is just kind of how I want it But in in my experience I think less is more when it comes to the spline tool and then I'll do in here as well Let's delete this one bring this one out. Make that a little bit bigger This could be About the same Let's bring this out. I think this should be very large like that all right, and That's very much more curvy. Let's bring this out a little bit more There you go. Move it around. Cool. I Think I'm happy with that You can spend a lot of time on this and I'm not gonna rush through it Which is kind of quickly kind of get it. All right, so I got that element I like to separate my elements in different sketches because I think it can get a little bit unjarring so I'll leave that sketch there and Let's turn off both of the rather just turn off the sketch number two because that was our kind of tail and our legs And then I'll make this shape here. So I'll make a new sketch in the same plane And then I'll start off I want to start off like kind of here here here here and then kind of create this unified thing here With all this is together. So I'll use The regular line tool I think the regular line tool works out well because just for the shape you see the pretty straight edges So start off something like right here Right here and then instead of like kind of creating the curve I'll just kind of make a straight edge there and then just kind of finish this out Like that like that like that and Then I'll stop right here and hit escape because I want to do a little trick here You can create we're using the line tool you can create an arc by clicking and holding so I'll click and With the mouse button I'll click and hold don't release the mouse button and as you move you'll start seeing that I'm making an arc now and Then I'll leave that arc and drop it here on that next point And then you can see that I automatically get a tangent constraint So that means these edges will these two rather will always be tangent But I want these two to be tangent as well So with those selected, I'll just type in tangent in my sketch shortcuts and there's your tangent Huh It doesn't do what I wanted it to in this case. So let me undo that and Delete this Maybe bring this over and then I'll start trying to do that curve again Like that there you go. And now I think what I can do is I can say this and this or tangent and That looks a lot better in my opinion. There you go Cool, so now you have that I'll probably bring this out a little bit This up a little bit I'm gonna do the same thing here Let's just delete that line because it's just kind of weird with it And then I'll again click and hold to create that arc And I'll drop it right there and then select these two lines and then add a tangent to smooth it out And there you go. It looks a little bit better And maybe bring this out a little bit again. You can spend as much time as you want Massaging these lines to make him how you want next up I'm gonna use the line tool again and using that same trick. I'm gonna do a giant arc here. So Like this and I'll stop it right about there and then hit escape cool next I'll bring out the You know the the spine tool again, and then I'll connect from here And I'm just make a two-point right there and then I'll just stop it like that Now I kind of want this these two to be tangent. So select these two lines Tangent there you go, and then Maybe I'll manipulate this here a little bit this this curve here just a little bit And I'm kind of happy with that. Maybe I can move Smooth that out a little bit. Yeah, I think that's okay. Maybe bring this down a bit there you go and I think See if I can I think that's okay All right, I'll hit finish sketch and then I'll bring out those two there And again, you can spend as much time massaging them, but I think less is more with these spline tools I'm gonna avoid doing the the two eyes. I just want the out, you know, the silhouette of the body and the head So at this point, we're gonna use the thin extrude I'm gonna hide or canvas just so I can see just what I want. I'll also hide the reference thing so I got these two lines and Right this point you can double click or just click on one if you have a consistent, you know a consistent line here And if you look at the bottom, it says the length the total length is 629 and millimeters and the LED strip is one million a hundred millimeters basic One M2 mm. It's a thousand millimeters So that's about half a little bit under half a little bit more than half of the strip And then this one I double-click because I have some lines here And that one's 500 so you're gonna need maybe two strips So it's it's important to know the length of your of your shapes so that you know how much strips you're gonna need So that's a little useful tip there Let me bring out the extrude. I use the hotkey e on my keyboard And I'm gonna switch the type from extrude to thin extrude and I'll select one of these one of these lines Select this one and what else you hear for the distance is make it 12 millimeters That's how tall I want it to be and then for the wall thickness. I found the thickness from for my Use works out really well with 9.6 And then I'll change the wall location to the center so it's in the center of that line So you can see here like that and then I'll hit okay Next up, I'll do the same thing extrude Click thin is extrude and then select that line And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use from start. I'm gonna do an offset and This is gonna be 1.2 millimeters. You can make it thicker if you'd like And then for the distance I'll also put 12 You can see it's already starting to cut through So this is the channel. We're creating the channel for our led strip to press fit into So the wall thickness for that is going to be 6.4 and Then the wall location again will use center and That way we're left with just it just enough thickness walls here for For just perimeters one or three printing it so hit okay And you'll see here that the thickness of our wall is 1.6 millimeters So 1.6 divided by 0.4 millimeters. That's four Perimeters thick and that's really good. That means it's just pure perimeters when you're printing it So no infill needed. It's just gonna be really nice and just perimeters. So it'll be nice and rigid So we got that element done and let's go ahead and do that same process for our cat head So again e for extrude change it to thin extrude select our line the the distance or the height is a 12 and then Our wall thickness is 9.6 and then our wall location is center And hit okay. All right, we'll do it again Then extrude select their line Offset on that start make it 1.2 the distance is 12 our wall thickness is 6.4 and Our location is center and then just kind of take a look at it. Yep. That's exactly what we want Okay Let fusion think about it. All right, and it's looking better. All right So at this point we have our elements, but now we need to connect them together and we need to add a hook Or rather a loop for a hook So we'll create a new sketch on the floor plane And I'm gonna project in some some Lines some geometry from our shapes. So I want to connect this to this line here. So Let's just select that edge hit P on the keyboard for the projection and I'm projecting that I want to project in this I Think I should connect this as well this to this and Then let's go ahead and do this one and This one and I think those are all I need Hit okay there. All right, so now I'm just gonna use the line tool and connect some dots here So connect this to over here. Oh, they didn't get They didn't get projected for some odd reason even though I know I selected it So select that edge again PMI keyboard. Okay. There it is at the line tool again and then just kind of create this this thing here and You can add some horizontal constraints if you want to be horizontal, but I don't think it matters. So I'm just gonna Do it like that Make another connection here That can be straight or perpendicular as you saw they get automatically added Let's do one here. You can use splines as well if you'd like if you need to add some curve or something But I think that works well Yeah, it looks fine And then the next thing I want to do is figure out how to do These hooks so with this design I'm actually gonna add two hooks because I think if I just add one It'll never be in the center and I'll just kind of keep rocking back and forth So let me project in some lines here for my hook my loop So project in that corner that nice rounded corner and then this spline shape here Cool, let me reorient myself. Alright now to create these hooks I'm just gonna make a two-point rectangle like that and then I'll use my line tool to create a curve on This edge and then that center dot there. I can use the circle and then make a five millimeter Circle there and that's a good minimum of five millimeters. I think it's good for a hook I'm using command hooks and that five millimeters seems to work well but if you have something else you can update that and then I'll make this eight millimeters or 7.5 millimeters and then I'll grab this edge make a construction line and then Kind of bring this out now. I can move this whole shape if I double-click it Move the whole shape down to where I want. So I kind of want it right here Let me go ahead and shift select the remaining Things and I'll use the move tool Hit M on your keyboard and then there's this checkbox create copy And then I can use these handles to make that copy and just move it where I want I want this to be over here on the above the tail area right about there hit okay and Now I can select all these elements and extrude them cool But first I want to do just these support beams or the sport connecting areas So I'll extrude these up 1.2 millimeters And that's the same kind of bottom wall thickness that we chose We can update that if we like but I like the 1.2 millimeters and make sure the operation is joined hit Okay, and then for these wall hooks. They're gonna have a different Thickness so I'm gonna make them 3 millimeters tall and then hit okay, and that's Those are our wall hooks and we can adjust this as we want. I think maybe that's a little close, but maybe that's okay That's our cat it's a very curvy bubbly cat, but again, you can always go back To the main kind of sketch and update these handles if you want them, you know any different and As you update them Your shape will update as well. I think you could right-click show dimensions Sometimes you can get the handle And you can manipulate it without having to go into Into the sketch, which is nice Let me bring his belly down, you know You can manipulate it in massages as much as you want But those are the main techniques that I wanted to share the thin extrude How to create your hooks and just thinking about you know working within the the balance of your 3d printer bed and thinking about the bend radius and also How to Manipulate those those spline curves they can be a little bit difficult sometimes But yeah, that's that's kind of how I created these LED signs I'll go ahead and share this one The fusion 360 link will be in the description But don't forget to check the learn guide because we have the ghost the wolf the grim reaper and I think I'll Leave this one alone. I'm not sure folks want the the lips. Let me know if you want the lips or not Earlier I tried making the cat shape as well This so this is my cat shape I added some fillets here just to kind of make it a little bit more stronger with these joints So I definitely recommend that in my first one here. I didn't add those fillets yet So you would just come down here use the f key I think that's the hot key and just kind of add these these fillets You make them as big as small as you want whatever aesthetically looks good to you And yeah, that's about that's about it for the tutorial It's a I get it's a little difficult to make shapes that look that resemble things I know the wolf one took me a while to figure out how to make a good looking wolf where The strip would actually fit through But yeah, that's that's kind of one of those things that you kind of have to just massage and keep working on Yeah, and definitely add fillets in those sharp edges I added these after creating the extrusion and that kind of helps Not kind of puncture or cut the silicone from the strips. So that's that's always good to do That's gonna do it for this one. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Let me know what you guys think about it I'll see you in the next one, but until then remember to make a great day. Bye folks