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LED PCB pattern?

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HarveyH42

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I'm looking for the artwork to make illuminator in the picture. It can be fewer than 36 LEDs, 18-24 would be best. I could have sworn I had it around here some place, no luck finding it. Searched the net, and several circuit sites, and this picture was the closest I could get.
 

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It doesn't look all that hard to reproduce. Power on one side, ground on the other and the lines should mesh together like gear teeth. Should be easy to make single sided. I assume it's a resistor per 9 or so LED's.
 
Unless you're making a lot, just make one out of prototyping board. Not rocket science.

There are big LED emitters which may actually be more practical. Sometimes one of those can exceed 100 of these LEDs.

There are guys on eBay who sell those boards.
 
I like the round shape, and haven't done too well on my own. Why try and reinvent the 'wheel'... But, I'm sure eventually I'll get it. Just looking for a short cut.

I have everything I need to etch PCboards here at home, and did a few 13 LED boards, but want more light. Oh, these are for 'grow-lights', red and blue LEDs.
I want to make about 6 of them and see if I can grow some vegetables from seed to fruit indoors. I've got about 26 catus seeds started in a window, but don't think they get enough light, and big enough for outdoors yet, so made the small lights.

Anyway, always thought an indoor vegetable garden would be cool, and if the LEDs work well enough, cheap to run too. Growing stuff outside sucks here, drought, insects, animals, and torrential rains (huricane season begins...), not to mention the summer heat.

Anyway, a commercial unit,with 3 of these sized arrays costs around $150.00, building one would cost $30-40...
 
a $9.99 80 watt fluorescent shop light from Home Depot will grow your "indoor garden" a lot better than a bunch of leds ... 'gas in glass' bulbs and leds are about equal as far as energy input = light output goes.... and for the flowering stage, the 70 to 100 watt high pressure sodium is hard to beat for its effectiveness ... of course, this only applies to tomatoes, anything else may or may not be legal *wink*
 
Seriously, I'm going to do vegetables. The drug test at work, just not worth it.
This is mostly an experiment with LEDs. Fluoresents put out a lot of light that plants don't use or need, even the expensive "grow" tubes, which are about $8.00 each, and last about a year (or so I've been told). I wanted to see how just the usable wavelengths worked out.

Went shopping for some more red leds, and found some super cheap Piranha Super Flux (chinese knock-offs), so ordered them instead. They're 70 degree, 1500mcd (not as bright, but who really knows...). I'm guessing the output is really about the same as the 5mms I used before (20 degree, 8000 mcd), but should need fewer to cover the same area. So, I'll have to make my own board anyway with wide trace for heatsinks...

I've got a 12v 500mA walwart running 39 LEDs, lights up nice and bright for my cacti sprouts, but since I built last weekend, too soon to notice and difference. Pretty sure that this is much lower power than the shoplite...
 
I have a $9.99 WalMart Fluorescent shop light. It is made in China, with a big and heavy ballast made in USA. It says on the ballast, "Use in temperatures above 68 degrees F" and it flickers like crazy in winter until it warms up.
It costs less than the cost of shipping a big and heavy ballast around the world.
 
Can't beat that Walmart quality... 68 degrees? Damn, that would have been useless where I grew up. It rarely got past mid 70s in the summer.
 
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