Tesseract 1

To say that I was inspired  by Sean Hodgins' tesseract would be a massive understatement. I've spent the last three-ish weeks working on different ways of making one, for someone without easy access to tritium.

My first go is LEDs, using frosted acrylic rod to conduct the light along the length of the connectors.

One of the sides isn't glued in place, it pops out so I can access the switch on the inside.

Terrible photo! So sorry!

Similarly, one of the sides of the inner cube pops out, so I can replace the battery.  The battery is a 3V coin cell that's smaller than the standard 2032, and I'm not sure what I'm going to replace it with when it dies.  The 2032 won't fit in the box.  

I ran into a few issues.
I couldn't get mirrors as thin as his prints were designed for, and then the guys who cut my mirrors weren't very precise, so my mirrors didn't fit the prints I made from Sean's design.  So I dinked around on TinkerCad until I could make my own cubes.  I didn't plan for a switch on the outside (I didn't want visible wires running out from the center, but I think I know how to at least make it look intentional).  The acrylic rods didn't transmit light as well as I hoped.  Next time, I'll put something reflective on the far end, see if that helps.  I didn't really plan for a way to open it.  At the moment, the "door" side is held in place by just  a pressure fit, and is harder to get out than I expected.  Lastly, I was in a hurry to get it done, so I didn't give the super glue  enough time to cure, so the fumes frosted the acrylic slightly.

Overall, not bad for a first run, and I have a list of tweaks to make the next one better.