Printing a light tube or guide in clear PLA?

Just wondering about making cases for devices such as the Raspberry Pi - and guiding the LED indicators on the PCB to the outside.

This method depends on total internal reflection - so wondering if a small part printed in clear PLA would be 'good enough' to transfer a decent amount of the light? I would imagine the intended direction of light transfer would have to be parallel to the printing layers for it to work at all.

clear material quickly becomes clouded as minute air pockets are trapped, even with 100% infill. Would depend on the shape of your part.

Perhaps print holes and insert PLA filament to make the guides, or better still acrylic, which you can key in 3mm rods. It would only work if it was straight though.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

With pla you could heat it and bend the filament so it wouldn't have to be straight. That is a really good idea nophead!

I used clear 3mm pla as a light guide for my logic analyser:

[i.imgur.com]

These were about 1cm lengths, with the other end near an SMD led inside. I found sanding the top of the rods made a nice diffuse output.