Hot Glue Madness

by Les Pounder

For some Friday Fun this week, lets take a look at making custom LED lights.

This all started from a tweet posted by Erin Riley. (Thanks for sharing Erin!)

Here we can see Erin has used silicon molds to contain hot glue, in to which an LED is submerged.

Being a massive kid, and with most of the required parts to hand I had a go myself, I used a colour changing LED to go for MAX blinkiness!

It seemed to be popular!

So how can you make your own?

Hot glue is really painful and it can do some damage to skin so DO NOT get it on your skin! Parents / Teachers support is required

You will need

  • A hot glue gun
  • Hot glue sticks
  • Molds (I used some Easter egg molds from Steve Amor and Lego figures from eBay)
  • LEDs

Steps to take

  • Turn on the glue gun and let it warm up.
  • Ensure the molds are clean and dust free.
  • Place the mold on a flat surface.
  • Fill as many spaces in the mold as you need.
  • Try to remove as much air from the glue as possible, stirring (not with fingers!) can help.
  • Push an LED(s) into the space(s) ensuring that the legs are still exposed. (Use a pencil / lollystick to push the LED into the HOT glue.
  • Wait for it to cool. (Or put it in freezer for 10 minutes on top of some Guinness Steak pies)
  • Carefully remove from the mold and test using a 3v CR2032 battery or connect it to your Raspberry Pi 3V pin and GND with an inline 100-330 ohm resistor. (Honestly go to #Pounderland and get some CR2032 batteries, really handy for testing LEDs)

So you should now have something like this...

Now go and have fun with this idea!