HQ Sixteen: Chin Light

Setting the Handi-Quilter HQ Sixteen handlebars at a useful angle aimed the main PCB’s white LEDs at the front of the arm, rather than down at the needle:

Having caused the problem, I must fix it:

The light comes from a small chip-on-board LED affixed under the chin of the machine arm with heatsink tape:

Yes, the pool of warm white COB LED light clashes horribly with the cool white 5 mm LEDs lighting the background (not to mention wintry daylight from the windows), but it’s sufficiently OK.

I intended to run the wiring inside the machine arm, but all the pre-existing holes I wanted to use were oiling access points or blocked by whirling shafts inside, so the wire runs along the outside:

The Handi-Quilter control & lighting goes through the bare gray ribbon cable to the handlebars, so I’m not too far down the stylin’ scale. The next version of the machine has round external cables, but this machine is what it is.

I mounted the 12 VDC supply to the back panel of the machine’s power box with five 3 mm holes:

A bag of right-angle barrel connectors will arrive shortly.

The exposed wiring at the top (the white wires carry switched 120 VAC from the PCB inside the box) seemed … unaesthetic, so I conjured a cover from the vasty digital deep:

Which fit neatly into place on the first try:

That’s a trial fit, because I am not pulling the machine apart again until there’s more work to do inside.

The blurry rocker switch below the Chin Light supply controls the machine power: turn it on and everything lights up as it should.

The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist: