Creation of a cool lighting zone
Everywhere you look now, there's some SWEET lighting setups going on. With all the recent advancements in LED technology, they have become more luminous, smaller and more energy efficient. Best thing of all, if you ever wanted to create a red light district in the comfort of your own living room, then this post is for you!
I found these COB LED chips at a local electronics parts store. Using part of an old Pentium 2 heatsink was the plan for heat-dissipation. I wasn't able to find any sort of spec-sheet on these COB LEDs so I wasn't sure of how much heat they would output, but I estimated that I could fit four chips onto this mass (it was moreso a mount, a cnc machined aluminum part that would serve as my heatsink) without overheating. I wasn't planning on running these LEDs at their maximum rated-voltage so I felt more confident I wouldn't cause any harm. Additionally, I would monitor the temperature extensively with an Infrared thermometer so I could gauge whether or not the cooling would be sufficient, at least for the first few hours to make sure I wasn't going to burn them out too quickly.
For me, not only would this be a project to get some snazzy cool mood lighting, it would be an exercise in light metalworking. I wanted to make some fine thread so I could practice that skill. One thing that I learned is that working with this tapping fluid is it's REALLY nasty stuff, best to use with gloves and in a well-ventilated area. Also, the thread that I was making was for an M2.5 screws, so quite small and delicate and much time and attention had to be taken to ensure that the threads came in the end. With care and diligence I was able to make some nice threads with a #43 drill bit and a 440 tapered tap.
APPLYING THERMAL INTERFACE COMPOUND - NOT SO "THICC" THO
I used some old thermal-paste I had to create a heat-conductive mating between the two surfaces. Without this material very little heat would be transferred out of the LEDs leading to their overheating and likely early failure.
I was using this terminal-block style barrel jack as a connector for my 12v wall-wart. Using a small piece of 2sided sticky pad, I found a handy spot on the aluminum as well as a place to house the switch. The switch was a double-pole single-terminal type which I only used because had a lot of lying around and needed to get rid of them. Since having bought a grab-bag of switches from an online electronics supplier a few years ago, something that I likely won't do again they've been sitting. And sitting: Of course I was expecting a decent mish-mash of switches, but most of them were pretty specific and I feel like the vendor was just using the grab-bag as a way for them to pawn off their less-popular stock on the unsuspecting masses. And while of course, you get what you pay for, it was an okay deal, I found that most of the switches were too specific and niche to have any sort of use for me. Not to mention, the switches I did use mostly felt cheap and while did still have proper certifications, wouldn't be ones that I would want to buy again. The only purpose of the switch in this case was to shut off the second bank of LEDs if you just wanted half the brightness.
soldertime
I ran two LEDs in serial, and two in Paralell with an option to switch on and off the second set. Also, as tempting as it may be, do not remove that plastic protective covering on the LEDs until you are done the project - no matter how tempting it may be. The material underneath is actually a kind of softy resin material that when touched becomes irreversibly marred. While it's still transparent, I'm sure affects some of the optic properties and possibly even affects the chip thermally in some way.
After using this light for a while, I kept an eye on the temperature and found the highest temperature to be at about 60ºC ... I think this should be well within the operating range of most semiconductor electronics and turned out to be a great heat sink for this particular application. I the end, it was a fun project and am interested in building further such creations if the time and need arises.
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This is a very interesting post!
I wish I had both the knowhow and time to be able to rig up custom LED lights.
They would come in very useful for my video work!
Great stuff.
The know-how is one thing, maybe I could do another more in-depth tutorial, I am wanting to make more lights for video use as well. So what I'm saying is the know-how can be easily remedied, but the other thing is time like you said! It does take a bit of time, but I guess it comes down to how much time/vs money, it's going to come down to those two in the end either way whether buying or making your own. And it is getting hard to compete with some of the prices that you can get nowadays with the pre-built lights so building it comes down to just having some fun... as well as utilizing some components that I had lying around. I have some more heatsinks, will just have to get some different colors and could get around to doing some stuff like this with arduino. Thanks for stopping by.
My kind of thing as an Electronics and Communications Engineer!
LED needs only 6 volts to light up that whole area and needs a few milli-Amperes to pass on those resistors.
I was a uLogger too. Too bad a lot has already given up on this and was not able to be consistent with it. Thanks for dropping by my posts on APPICS man and given me a little bit of something.
Now I know the reason why somebody would hate that comment I posted. See you around mate. Hope everything's fine there!
Thanks again, and thanks for checking out the post. To be honest I didn't even use any resistors here, I think I got lucky with the current limit of the "wall-wart" I was using to power these LEDS as well as having enough heat-sinking. I have been reading a lot about the need for resistors and/or current limiting circuits in order to avoid burning out the LED from 'thermal runaway.' I really wish I had studied harder and devoted more time/energy because trying to wrap my head around some of the 'higher level' electronics engineering stuff is not very easy at times now! But better late than never I guess. I guess I'll know where to come if I have questions! ;)
Hello there! I am glad to have gotten genuine connection now to the ones who disagreed with me in that most unlikely moment. And seeing you recognize my posts now, I am grateful for it.
Yes, ask me anything about Electronics and Semi-conductors and I'll share the things that is within my scope of knowledge. It took me grueling hours of doing a lot of computations during those times from my College years. It was a tough job compared to careers that would land someone into Tourism job, Business Administration or even IT. But the most in-demand jobs at the moment is in the Information world.
Continue whatever it is that gives you joy. Mine for now is the passion for customer service. I love helping people out. Easy thing for people who also wanted to help other people.
Thanks for checking out my posts sir. I will drop by yours from time to time. If you happen to be on APPICS, I'll be more than willing to give a handful amount of upvote. Pity, my 100% here on the Steemit platform is only $0.002
I even waited for days just to fill my resource credits and go back here to acknowledge your response. See yah! Keep safe there sir!
Hello sir. Greetings to you. Please check the steemit blog now about the 1-M Steem Power delegation. please let me know what do you think of it?
I think it's nice they delegated back to some community initiatives, but I'm seriously troubled by their freezing of stake when a few weeks ago, @justinsunsteemit made this post which he later edited. He spoke about 'the sanctity of private property' and now is directly contradicted by current witness voting of Steemit inc controlled @dev365 in which they support the freezing of private property by unvoting anyone not running the fork code to freeze assets. Blatant hypocrisy. This is why I find any good will by @justinsunsteemit aka Steemit Inc. to be just fake words. I guess time will tell what happens to Steem, I guess a lot of people still have hope.
This is what the edits to the original post consists of:
Until this is sorted out I find any positive action taken by Stinc to be a positive one... Which is pretty sad - I honestly thought there would never be a day where I powered down. Nor wanted to! I was surprised to hear about the Justin Sun acquisition but went in with the best hopes but with all that was said and done over those following weeks I sort of lost that hope and it doesn't seem to be coming back. The opposite really. I guess this is much more opinion than what you asked for 😛
Edit: Of course there is more to the story and I'm still learning lots, not completely open to the idea that there is something else going on here. Nor do I think that 'Hive' is the be-all-end-all. Still a bit undecided on this whole thing to be honest as both 'camps' have not always behaved honorably. But the freezing of funds, I'm not so down with, I wasn't too impressed when I heard the steemit stake had originally been frozen! But alas, here we are. And I think APPICS deserves a bigger delegation!!
Wow that's awesome 👌
Thanks @alamin33
Welcome 😊
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