There are services that will do 3d printing for you. Like https://craftcloud3d.com Of course resin is available in translucent, but also PETG, ABS, and PLA.
You could instead try to find a good place on the camera module to connect to. There is 3.3v there.
Any chance you have calipers? So you could measure the thickness of the logo. It’s probably pretty thin, but leds come really tiny. 0402 is 1.0 mm × 0.5 mm. Maybe on a flex pcb around the inner circle of the logo, shining sideways towards the gear spokes of the logo.
I just ordered the new top case, so when that’s that gets delivered I’ll do my best to cleanly cut out the logo and get measurements of it.
I do actually have some experience designing PCBs, so if it’s large enough, the idea for a flex PCB around the inside of the logo is really smart.
I’ll have to see if I can figure out whether the webcam module is powered when the laptop is sleeping or shut down, because I want the logo light to only be on when the laptop is, but that is a good alternative place to pull power. The LEDs shouldn’t pull enough to be problematic.
I got the new top panel yesterday, but I didn’t get around to pulling off the logo until today. It seems to be a simple piece of plastic that’s just glued in place, because I dropped in some adhesive remover from the backside and then was able to peel it off.
The bad news is that the recess this leaves us with is 0.45mm deep, which is really not a lot of space to work with.
I think @KillBoyKillDear’s idea of pulling power from the fingerprint sensor is genius, because then when the laptop is asleep, the top cover logo will pulse, like the fingerprint reader does, and that’s something worth striving for, in my opinion.
I’ll whip up the CAD later tonight to try and 3D-print a drop-in, so I know what my size constraints look like. I’m not proficient enough in my metalworking to confidently say I can remove some of the material, but I’ll have to ask some friends of mine who are metal wizards what they think I could do. 0.45mm is really not much space to work with, even with a flexPCB and 0402 LEDs, so punching through more or deepening the area is a must.
I’ve put a couple hours into it, and I’m running into CAD troubles. It’s prohibitively difficult to turn a PNG or SVG into a sketch in Inventor. If anyone has any ideas for where I could get a usable 3D or 2D CAD file or drawing of some kind that I could actually import, that would be much appreciated. I don’t quite have the time or patience to trace the exact outline with the curve tool.
Why not replace the black plastic with a light diffuser and then have LEDs in each of the holes? All the circuitry would then be on the inside of the lid. How much room behind the screen do you have for that?
That model is amazing! I’ll get one printed in the next few days to check that it fits.
That’s exactly what I was considering. I think I could cut away a lot more of the aluminum where the holes are, so I can have more, dimmer LED’s for uniform lighting. There’s roughly another half of a millimeter between the screen and the aluminum itself on the inside, so that should be enough space for a small circular PCB with LED’s on it.
I have an FDM printer, and I just ordered some clear PLA, but I don’t know if that’ll turn out super well, so I may end up paying an online print service or having a friend of mine resin-print the final product. I don’t think I can buy frosted acrylic that thin, and I can’t think of other ways to get a clean output.
You don’t really want it totally clear though, it will need a frosted look to get an even glow over it. But even then I suspect some more holes may need to be drilled to get the LEDs to illuminate it without appearing as spots.
Went to the machine shop today and put some extra holes in the logo. They’re imperfect, but it’ll definitely give me a lot more options for lights and where to put them. I think I can probably fit two or three lights in the larger holes if I’m pushing it, and then maybe one in the smaller holes. I flew a little close to the sun with the smaller holes, because I just had to drill those ones fresh, but they worked out okay.
Every time I check all of the printers are occupied, but I’ll be home for spring break in a couple weeks, so worst case I can do some test prints when I get home.
This likely is a dumb question but is it possible to cut away some fo the back covering of the display panel and use light from there to illuminate things, similar to how I presume that it was donr in older apple laptops? Then you might be able to cut out the entire metal logo and put in a plastic one, potentially gluing the metal center of the cog back into the plastic insert.
That was actually my original plan, there’s just so much more risk involved.
I don’t know how far to cut, or what exactly the insides of the LCD are like, so the odds of me ruining an $180 screen aren’t low, and that’s not a risk I really wanted to take.
It would be a better way to do it, and it is how the older MacBooks did it, but I don’t quite trust myself to make those cuts.
Maybe you could put out a request for broken screens, if someone has one with a working backlight but broken LCD, for example, they might be willing to try cutting into it or ship it to you. This community can surprise, you never know. Or possibly Framework themselves would be willing to send a broken one to you. Best of luck, I’ll be following this to see how it all works out for you! Very cool project.
If nothing else, a broken LCD’s diffuser sheet could come in handy. Cutting out the right shape would require a good stencil or jig and a steady hand, or a laser cutter though.
The original holes were actually two different sizes, two of them were larger than the other four, which you can see in the images above. The smaller holes were ~2mm, and the larger ones ~2.4mm.
Have you considered using surface mount LEDs? The lens on these should poke through existing holed, and wiring them up shouldn’t be too fiddly (note that pads are on top, tho - but they probably wrap around to allow bottom soldering, too), and they’re 3.3v, too. You might be able to get away with just three of these - they’re bright - and use three mounting pegs:
Doesn’t look like there is space available for those LEDs. Those are 1204 package size, 3.2mm L x 1.2mm W. And the lens heights are more. There is so little space available that he probably wants to go with a tiny 0402 package, 1mm L x 0.5mm W. Some have really miniscule heights. Like 0.25mm EAST10052WA0 Everlight
