Questions on LED specs

beeiilll

beeiilll

Supporting Member
Well being that I have been out of the loop on prototyping and design for quite a few years, I need some help on LED specs.
I am looking at designing an LED light bar to use with plastic blowmolds that will give me multicolors as well as white lighting for the molds. I am considering a bar approx. 2" wide by roughly 24" long that I would insert up into the mold. That way I won't have to cut up the mold on the surface only the bottom would need to be modified.
So my question is what is available out there for max brightness in LEDs now days? I would consider using RGB LEDs if there are any available, but probably I would end up using seperate red, green, blue, and white LEDs to get the max light output from them I would think?
What are the "superflux" LEDs that I have been seeing reference too on here?
Also I am assuming that I would want something with a wide dispersion (say 120 degrees or more), 8mm or larger, and 1 watt or more? Unless I build say 3 seperate sticks and put them in a triangle configuration and then could use LEDs with a smaller dispersion angle? This would give me more brightness overall as well?
Please forgive my lack of knowledge on these as I said I have not been doing design for many years and haven't been following the new things available.
So can anyone "enlighten" me on LED specs and point me in a good direction to learn more about them please?
I guess that I also need to worry about the heat output since this is going into a plastic mold. One LED isn't bad but a lot of them could throw off some heat?
Thank you for any info you can shed on this. I see where you folks on here are building some amazing things and the ideas are great.

Bill Ellick
 
Bill,

Let me be the first to welcome to you DIYC! This is an amazing place with lots of folks to help you get what you are looking for.


As for the strips, See this thread http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7288. These are already designed and just need ordering and assembly. The details around these are there including the LED specifications. Frank is more than willing to answer any questions you may have on them.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Chris
 
SuperFlux or Piranha is a reference to the package format which is a low profile/rugged configuration. This format allows for a consistent light output since it's mounted flat against the PCB - unlike typical 2-lead LEDs which can be off center a tad (in all directions).

As Chris indicated, Frank just completed a coop for a an 18 RGB/18 White flood strip that would work OK but most if not all blowmolds have colors painted on them so the mix of other colors from the light could get - well - ugly. You would have to play with the different colors quite a bit. You didn't indicate what controllers you are using as these are typically driven from a DC source so take that into account.

You might also have good results with fewer high power LEDs as long as you can diffuse them in some way to get rid of the spot effect from them.

btw - Welcome to DIYC!
 
Thanks for the welcome guys.

Yes I saw that I just missed the coop on Franks boards. Bummer.
Maybe I will get a chance to get ahold of one to play with sometime or I will just have to wait till another coop goes through.

I figured that in the mean time I should try to catch up and learn more about the types and outputs available in the LED world nowdays.
And yes I am aware of the problems with the colors of the blowmolds being a concern, but I think that using RGB and DMX control or something it would be possible to tailor the color of the light to work with different blowmold colors (well I hope anyway).

I am currently using 256 channels of LOR for my display, but I need a lot more channels with a new idea that I am working on for a blowmold poriton of the display. So I hope to have roughtly 400 channels for things, but may not make that many for this year.
This idea for the blowmold lighting could eat up approx. 400 channels of control all by itself if I go as crazy as I would like too. I have over 100 blowmolds and if I just do regular LEDS with 4 colors per mold, you can see how it would get messy very fast. Another reason to look towards using DMX and RGBs for them.
Well until I can get my hands on one of Franks boards to test out or build a prototype myself I will just have to study up and see how it progresses.
Thanks for the help.
Bill
 
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