I got this idea when Daniel Spangler, one of our Make Labs interns, finished building a DIY trebuchet kit at 10PM and wanted to launch stuff with it. He taped LEDs and a coin cell battery onto a tennis ball so that we could see where it would fly in the dark.

I thought it looked just a bit janky, so I came up with the idea of encasing the LEDs and battery into a transparent plastic ball. I modeled it in AutoCAD, printed it on our Thing-O-Matic 3D printer, inserted the LED and battery, and behold: a glowing LED ball thing.

I'm quite pleased by how it came out for a first attempt. The light is definitely more saturated on the top where the LED is pointed at, but the PLA plastic that the ball is made out of defuses it nicely.

The ball is a solid and will take about 1.5 hours to print.

Native DWG file included for anyone to edit.

Materials: -5mm LED -CR2032 lithium battery

Tools: -Pliers -Clippers

Steps:

1. Download the STL file and print out the ball.
2. Clip the leads halfway off the LED and insert into the ball.
3. Insert the battery in between the leads of the LED (making sure the polarity it correct) and watch the ball light up.