nice project tagging along.
Thanks!
Nice.
I assume your soldering skills are equal to your engineering skills, because a single tiny sloppy solder job near one of those screws could cause you some sweet headache
I personally hate using screws on LEDs, but then again, in your CNC situation, it's almost silly not to use them. Just too simple to have the CNC do it.
I love this!
Yes my soldering skilz are good. It comes from having to solder things like the following.
Notice the two parts J5 and J8? See the the pin separation?
It's 8 thousandths of an inch! Each of these widgets had four of these. I had to solder a bunch of them. Each one took 45 minutes. Keep in mind the smallest diameter solder you can buy is 20 thousands in diameter.. These were not fun.
That's why I use nylon screws......it solves a lot of problems.
Scott
Yeah. But I see the nylon washers as possibly hiding something underneath I want to see. Plus threading them on all the screws is a bit time consuming. But they certainly work.
Here I thought you would bend them up. You gonna polish those petals?
If I bent them up they couldn't act as reflectors.
Polish..? AHAHAHAHAHAHAAH
I did the same and just screwed them in with #4 screws without washers using self tapping screws.
Here is my thread:
Yet another LED build
And really, I have very little soldering experience. I learned how to do it 20 years ago in college and haven't done it since until now
If you look at the stars it seems like they were planning for #4 screws to be used to hold the LED's. And yes, I recommend to test each LED for a short - but even without screws I would have done that ...
Nice build. I've been following it.
Yes the star notches are #4 sized but I didn't want any contact with the top or crowding of the terminal pads so I used #2 flat head screws - which means their undersides are conical shaped so there is no flat bottom pressing on the top of the stars.
As for soldering. These take some adjustment from standard soldering due to the major thermal transfer. I had to alter my methods a bit. Those Luxdrive stars are absolute $**&^$^*@!! to solder. Thanks to the idiots who think we can't use lead safely. They are 'tinned' with lead free solder.. That's why they are so hard to work with.
There has also been the rare case of the LED being soldered on backwards.
Yes! It's so fast and easy to test the LEDs it's almost obscene not to. I just set my meter to diode test and methodically run down every one of them. On this build it will probably take all of 60 seconds.
TheFishMan: Actually, yes, I found one of my LED's to be soldered on backwards onto the star (+/- were switched). If you look in my thread on the first pic you might be able to see it (3'rd from teh bottom right on the right long row of the rack).
Like I said, I would meassure the LED's all anyways for a short / LED direction before turning on the juice - so screwing them in seems like low risk to me
kCress: if you don't want to sell do you want to share the DWG so we can upload it to emachineshop.com? (I am curious what they would charge for such a CNC job
)
Let's see if it works first! Man, that place would probably charge $400 for one. Every time I check there I leave reeling.
So awesome! It took me a while to read your "elevator tank" thread, but now I am subscribed to both threads.
I can't wait to see pictures. As you well know Kcress, I also share the preference of the Hawaiian snorkeling look.
Thanks for the kudos. When we make it to Hawaii we get up, eat, go to the target snorkeling spot and snorkel until hunger over takes us. We crawl out, eat bag lunch, and slither back in until it's too dark to see. Crawl out, eat dinner, sleep. Wake up and repeat at the next snorkeling spot. Seven days... Get on plane. LOL
