If your child is making a special wish, you will do everything to make it happen, right? So my daughter’s wish was a ‘moon lamp’. And here is it: a magnetic levitating (MagLev) wireless moon light:

It is the 50th anniversary of moon landing, so I thought that wish needs to be realized.

To build it, I used the following:

• A laser cutter or access to it (I used an enhanced version) to cut plywood and PMMA material
• a 3D printer or access to it (I used an Ultimaker 2) to print the moon, I used a white PLA
• 3D model of the moon: I have used the fantastic work from Leung Chan (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3242080)
• MagLev Kit, search the usual vendors, e.g. this one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32826436109.html
• For a wireless moon illumination, search for “Magnetic levitation wireless power supply module”, e.g. this one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32822002952.html
• For a battery/USB based LED kit with remote controller, see https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32998601607.html

 

The wireless LED module gets placed into a 3D printed enclosure:

The magnet is put inside the enclosure and the LED module glued on top of it:

Below a test with the 4″ version of the moon:

The module gets glued into the moon while it gets printed. Below the 6″ version of it:

I printed the moon without any support and with 100% infill, using a white PLA. To stabilize, I uses some scrap plywood to keep it in place:

MagLev Base

The original MagLev base came with 8 LEDs on the side. I have cut them and re-attached them to have everything inside a circle.

Below is a version of the enclosure using laser cut 5mm PMMA/Acrylic:

I have put the wireless charging board into the bottom part of the PCB and added an on-off switch to turn off the light:

Placing the moon on the base takes a bit of practice and should be done quickly, otherwise the coils get very hot and could overheat. The video below shows the process:

The magnetic field can pull away the magnet with up to about 500 g. Of course no sensitive devices should be placed in the magnetic field.

A cool use case is to levitate small things or a cactus on the magnet :-):

Desk Lamp

I have built a version of the moon lamp with a LED bump inside. I used a 40W (10 or 20W would do it as well) LED light bulb with a cable and a switch:

The LED bulb then gets placed inside the moon and it can hang up. I used a ‘warm white’ LED here:

Another option is to use a charged version: this includes an IR sender and a microcontroller board with 4 LEDs (white, red, green, blue). The picture below shows it with a 4″ moon version:

The board with the battery is glued into a 3D printed socket:

With this, I have a color cycling moon 🙂

Name Plate Version

Looking for another use case? At the university our institute chief assistant designed his own name plate:

Kind of boring, right? The next step in the evolution is to have something laser cut like this:

Having a MagLev available makes things a bit more exiting:

I like the Acrylic one too:

But maybe you like the version with the moon too:

It is cool to make such a MagLev device. All what it needs is some pre-built parts and putting them together.

Happy Mooning 🙂

Links

• https://blog.mifi.no/2015/12/29/levitron-ion-revolution-platform-ez-float-teardown/
• https://hackaday.com/2017/02/26/howd-they-do-it-levitating-orb-clock/
• https://conorpp.com/blog/designing-a-clock-with-levitating-arms-part-1