While Christmas might have come and gone, this no-glue LED diffusing PLA print by Mark Durban (aka MakeALot) is a thing of beauty in any season, and a master class for taking a model you need to produce and refining how it fits together and incorporates electronics such that your derivative adds something back to the community. Thingiverse Thing 39085:

Just a quick mash-up in OpenSCAD of Paul Murrin’s excellent star to enable me to join the pieces together without glue and insert LEDs into the points

I printed this with %0 fill, 3 shells at 0.2mm layer height, 120mm/s travel on a Replicator2 in natural PLA. Each point takes about an hour….

Insert an LED into each point as you push the connectors between the points.

Finish by inserting the 8 spare LEDs into the cavity and then push the base into place making sure you place the cable in the slot.

Read more.

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!