How to make white ASA more opaque?

If I’m printing a piece of white ASA that’s 2 mm thick, what can I do to make it more opaque? It’ll be placed in front of two small indicator LEDs and I’d like to completely obscure them.

What is your infill like around that area in the slicer? You could potentially add a modifier with 100% infill in that particular area but given its 2mm thick i suspect there might not be that much infill available potentially.

Use darker filament inside the print and white for the top surface only. Or remove the LEDs, or cover them with black tape.

I made it 100% but now I’m wondering if that was counterproductive as it conducts the light better; I suspect a lower infill that scatters the light more might be more effective

The LEDs aren’t removable and I can’t tape the surface, sadly.

I hadn’t thought of a darker filament layer inside, I’ll see if I can give that a shot

You can always remove the LEDs. You don’t have to unsolder them, just clip them with a wirecutter, even if they are surface mount parts. Or put dark tape on the inside of your print if you don’t want to put it on the LEDs.

That’s a nice effect actually. But yea, something opaque stuck to the inside of the print in front of the LEDs was my first thought. Like electrical insulating tape. But if that cover is thin, the opaque material may be visible if it is dark. So perhaps an opaque but light color material instead (electric tape does come in colors, but anything you can cut to size and is somewhat heat resistant should work).

I agree that adding more infill will conduct the light better, if anything. OTOH an air gap will allow the light to scatter more before it hits the enclosure, affecting a larger area. So I think a more opaque material as close to the light source as possible is the most promising avenue. Perhaps you could create a little box around the LEDs and line that with the opaque stuff.

-Max

PS. Perhaps another option is to stick an opaque tape to the entire inside of the enclosure, blocking all light out. That way no worries about light bleed and simpler design. Something like reflective metallic duct tape comes to mind… the backing of that should be light enough to not show through the enclosure.

Increase the top and bottom layers / increase infill percentage.

I really like mixing production methods and along the lines of using tape, you could use a marker, or aluminum foil or something to block the light, or insert something between the layers to block the light. If none of these are an option, it would help if you provide the reason these are not options.

Another outside the box option, is to break/cut out the LEDs.

Staying inside 3D printing, you could look at other brands of filament. I have noticed a big difference in the amount of titanium Dioxide (white pigment) in polymaker vs jayo for instance. I would expect more premium brands like bambu or polymaker to have a higher pigment content.

I second the idea to make a dark insert

3-5 layers of black. 7-10 layers of white. It’ll be white on the outside and opaque to the light. If you have AMS you can do it all in one go, or you can just print a black plate and glue it on the inside.

2mm height means ~10 layers, which might be cutting it close on the black not being visible, so maybe consider 3mm :slight_smile:

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Today I learned! I’ll look for some different colored electrical tape; I always imagine the super sticky black rubber(?) stuff. The metallic duct tape is a great idea!

Also a great idea! I thought the same about the cheaper brands when I tried them; this one is Overture, which I saw is generally accepted as being a Bambu supplier. I should have mentioned the brand, sorry!

Someone asked (and now I can’t find the post) why I can’t tape or remove the LEDs, but I can’t find that now and it was a fair question!

The LEDs are on a light switches; I actually bought a 3D printer in the first place to be able to cover them up and have a surface to mount my smart buttons on. I don’t want to remove the switches entirely since that removes easy ability to turn off power to the lights (e.g. for maintenance) and I don’t want to deface the switches’ LEDs or put on anything that would leave sticky residue.

For this particular plate, I don’t have a switch yet, but for another one (this one only has an LED when it’s powered off, so it’s not visible here) you can see what I’m talking about:

Checking back in: I ended up going with @Bullocks ‘s suggestion as it also had the added benefit of making it much easier to remove the covers and inserts without breaking the little latched legs.

I went through a few iterations before settling on this one that made a really clean print and a just-right friction fit. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone!