Best way to connect wire to LED? Simple Q

[steamer]

I have a project where i have 8 LED's scattered around the front panel of my enclosure. It is not feasible to have the LED's mounted on a circuit board as the control panel is huge, at the moment with my prototypes I use telephone wire (cat 5) soldered to the circuit board that takes the power to the LED's where I simply just twist the wire on to the legs of the LED's and apply a bit of solder.

I'm getting to the point where I would like to 'mass produce' (a run of 100 with a vue to more if all goes well) my project.

Q) To me just twisting the wires to the LED's like described seems errr 'unaccepable', what I have created is an audio product, but would a distributor take on my work with 'shoddy' wiring?

Bearing in mind this is my first project, I'm just not sure to what 'standard' I should be making these connections.

Am I just worrying about nothing here? At the end of the day the connections are solid enough.

If not, is there another more 'pro' way of connecting? some sort of crimp clip?

 

[andrew2022]

yes. itz a little known technique what is very hard to do called soldering

 

[steamer]

yes. itz a little known technique what is very hard to do called soldering

Like I said. They ARE soldered. OK then so what u are saying is that this is fine as is.

What I'm asking really is, do distributors of electronic goods, have a standard that circuits and they're connections should meet?

 

[andrew2022]

yes. itz a little known technique what is very hard to do called soldering

Like I said. They ARE soldered. OK then so what u are saying is that this is fine as is.

What I'm asking really is, do distributors of electronic goods, have a standard that circuits and they're connections should meet?

missed the part where you said soldered... sorry... i would put a small bit of heatshrink on after soldering it aswell to make it look more professional. also try to cut down the length of the legs on the LED's to enough where you can solder them... from things ive take apart most LED's are like that

 

[daviddoria]

yea heat shrink makes it look 20x nicer, although it doesn't change the connection at all.

i'd go with that and you should be fine

 

[bmcculla]

There are a suprising number of products out there that are hand soldered. If you open up one of those wall light dimmers most of the connections are hand soldered. My boss used to own a company that made silicon wafer handling robots - all their electronics were assembled by hand.

PCBExpress is afiliated with a company called screaming circuits that is set up to do small run board stuffing if you are looking for board assembly.


Brent

 

[steamer]

Thanks both of you. Thats cleared things up in my head loads, shrink tube it is then, and a little less worrying in future

 

[steamer]

There are a suprising number of products out there that are hand soldered. If you open up one of those wall light dimmers most of the connections are hand soldered. My boss used to own a company that made silicon wafer handling robots - all their electronics were assembled by hand.

PCBExpress is afiliated with a company called screaming circuits that is set up to do small run board stuffing if you are looking for board assembly.


Brent

Right interesting, see I thought hand soldered goods may be laughed at by the distribution company.
I will also keep the company you mentioned in mind as that is what I will be looking for for the board.

Thanks.

 

[andrew2022]

it would be pretty hard to make a robot what could solder... (and to a quality higher than what a person could).

 

[steamer]

it would be pretty hard to make a robot what could solder... (and to a quality higher than what a person could).

I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to make one thats better than me

 

[daviddoria]

look at a motherboard. do you think that is hand soldered? they obviously have some pretty sweet robots...

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

look at a motherboard. do you think that is hand soldered? they obviously have some pretty sweet robots...

I'm afraid not! - they are 'flow soldered', basically they float the board over a bath of molten solder (usually with 'waves' running down it), this 'solders' all the joints in a single operation.

 

[ljcox]

You could mount the LEDs on a small strip of verro board cut so there are two holes per copper strip and twice as many strips as there are LEDs. The LEDs would be soldered to one pair of copper strips and the wires to the other pair. Alternatively, make up a small PCB.

Len

 

[bmcculla]

Another soldering method uses IR heating (like the filaments on a standard toaster oven) to solder the components onto the board.

Steamer: if you just solder together all 100 of your boards yourself by the end you will be a damn good solderer. :wink:
Brent