Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

Holder for led arrays

Status
Not open for further replies.

Radish150

New Member
Hey all, anyone have an idea for a cheap way to mount say...200 leds to something nice looking and have it stand up on a table? I would like to make a few of them so it would have to be something that was pretty easy, don't want to have custom made plexiglass boxes, that would be nice but pricey. Sorry my first question is so weird :0) I suppose alternatively they could be hand held, just looking for a simple solution.

Thanks
Mark
 
Hey all, anyone have an idea for a cheap way to mount say...200 leds to something nice looking and have it stand up on a table? I would like to make a few of them so it would have to be something that was pretty easy, don't want to have custom made plexiglass boxes, that would be nice but pricey. Sorry my first question is so weird :0) I suppose alternatively they could be hand held, just looking for a simple solution.

Thanks
Mark

Hi Mark,

Welcome to the forum!

We're big fans of information here. So I'm gonna hammer you with questions which will help us provide help without this turning into a two-week back-and-forth session of "How about trying. . ." followed by "Well, I was thinking something more like. . ." :)

Do you have any ideas of what you want the device to do? Just glow steadily? Or will it indicate something? I mean, something which is intended to be a VU meter might look pretty crappy if it was built to look like a lamp, and vice versa. Then again, done right, it might look pretty good. So it would be helpful to know what you want the 200 LEDs to do.

What size are LEDs? Are we talking regular old 5mm round LEDs here, or flat LEDs, or surface-mounts, or Luxeons (ooooh. . .200 of those would be impressive) or what? I'm guessing round 5mm LEDs. I've had good luck just drilling 5mm holes and wedging the LEDs in there through the back, but you can get various kinds of mounts which fit in slightly larger holes. Then you place the holder in the hole, push the LED in from the back, and the width of the LED forces the mount out against the sides of the hole, holding it in place. Sometimes this type uses a second piece which acts as a shim to hold things tight.

Epoxy works. So does hot glue. Depends on the look you're going for. Hot glue is a lot easier to remove later if you don't like it, though.

What do you mean by "cheap"? Cheap means different things to different people. What's your budget?

Depending on the kind of LED you're using, 200 of them might generate a lot of heat. That might be a consideration.

Anyway, give us some more information and somebody may come up with something you like. Depends somewhat on what you can do and what you're into. For instance, currently I'm really into welding and I'm a computer programmer, so I might be likely to think of something I could make out of steel and which would indicate operating conditions on some of the servers I maintain. You might have different interests which would affect what you want to make.


Regards and good luck,

Torben
 
Gayan Soyza, Mini Sign-board on your site, do not have any photos or links.

You reminded me.Its also an ornament project.I have drawn a rough schematic (on a piece of paper) & its a completed project with PCBs.

I must draw it nicer & upload it with some videos as well.I'll inform you after drawing :)
 
Last edited:
Radish just use a wood box. Easy to make custom yourself, use decent wood and sand them well and they look extremely nice either painted or stained (I'd go stained). As far as mounting the LED's themselves just use standard perf board and paint it a nice colour. If you want to hide the holes in the perf board use something like craft paper over the front and use the LED's legs to punch through the paper into the perf board, that way you get the perfect grids that perf board allow and a flat smooth good looking front as well. The wood is pretty durable, the craft paper would not be but it's the first thing I thought of to hide the holes in the perf board. You could use plastic or wood on the front as well and just use a drill press through the back of the perf board but that'd be 400 holes. If you want it to look real good though it'll take some work. I've seen some REALLY nice wood cases done for electronics projects, and even this one for a PC.
**broken link removed**
Obviously you get out what you put into the project =) I personally wouldn't go for quiet that much flare myself but I ran across the pic on the net and had to post it as an example =)
 
Last edited:
LED Matrix Cube is more awesomer than Blue Awesome cube.
 
My Led holders

Hey Torben, all. Thanks for the offer of help, I have attached a couple of photos that are about what I'm looking for. What I really want to do is just buy something pre-made that I can stuff leds into. The "book" or a single palate look would be fine, or the "pod". There must be someplace that sells weird stuff like this? I would rather not "assemble" something, but something ready to stuff.

???

Thanks and here's the picky's, sorry they are really small.

Mark...
 

Attachments

  • sm-1br.jpg
    sm-1br.jpg
    4.3 KB · Views: 123
  • the-profht.jpg
    the-profht.jpg
    4.8 KB · Views: 116
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top