Glow Feet

Sunbeam are producing feet with LED's, but why pay a lot of money when you can make them your self. It is easy and cheap.

To make these feets, you need some acrylic, 5mm, some LED's, resistors and some glue. I also recoment felt to prevent the feet from scratching the floor. The acrylic must be cut to fit the feet of unor computer. I used a saw with smaal teeth followed by some grinding.

I chose 5mm acrylic, as the leds I use have a diameter of 5mm. I used a Dremel clone to cut the opening for the LED's. Even though the leds are pointing forward, the heel will stil light up, but not quite as powerfull ast the toe.

The space in the feet are limited, so I decided to make this setup. Since the LED only uses 20mA there are no probling using a single resistor to all the LED's.

The wire and resistor has been soldered to the LED's and the LED's are glued to the acrilyc. Now it is time to gle the black feet to the acrylic, but since it is difficult to replace the LED's after the feet are glued to the acrylic I chose to test the ELD's before the feet are assembled. At this time I also need to cut a notch to be able to screw the feet to the case.

The effect in the dark is great. I might have over done it by using 3 7200mcd LED's. I would guess that LED's ranging from 1000mcd to 3500mcd would be enough for a great result.

This is how the feet will look when they are finished. Remember the mountings before you glue the feet together. Before the feet can be mounted on the case there must be drilled holes for the wires. I recomend to place the holes as close to the center of the mounting as possible. This way the risk of damaging the wires when turning the feet are minimized.

A few pictures of the glow feet mounted on my computer.