You might be able to spread the beam out by grinding/polishing a flat spot on the end to counteract some of the focusing effect. Larry A.
Alistair Bell wrote: > > I was inspired by the German site and by Roger's work so yesterday at work > while waiting for some E. coli to grow, I tried my hand a making a LED dash > light. > > materials: > > red LED from bike light. Unsoldered from little board, which of course meant > it only had very short "legs". Checked out to be approx. 1.8 V and a narrow > beam spread (20 degrees?). "Flattened" area at base of LED indicates the > negative post. > > resistor - 470 - 500 ohm (calculation/estimation based on a dash voltage of > 10V and a LED voltage of 1.8) > > dash light bulb holder. > > some 22 gauge telfon insulated tinned copper wire (scraps at hand) > > heat shrink tubing. > > Method (made up as I went along): > > drilled 1/16" hole in base of bulb holder. Soldered 1" lengths of wire to > the legs of the LED. shrunk small lengths of heat shrink over the solder > joints. Cut one of the lengths of wire back to aprox 1/4" and removed > insulation. Tinned/soldered the exposed wire to make solid. Bent that back > upon itself to make a tight "V". > > The other wire is fed down through the bulb holder and out the drilled hole, > The LED is pressed into the holder with the bent wire making contact with > one of the internal bulb holder contact. The LED is a good fit and the bulb > holder itself "stretches" a little to hold it in tight. I marked with a felt > pen the side of the bulb holder that the LED was making contact with the > internal contacts. > > The wire sticking out of the base was trimmed a little and leg (trimmed > also) of the resistor soldered to it. A very short length of wire was > soldered to the other leg of the resistor. > > The free end of the short length of wire was soldered to the "topside" ie > the side that does not come in contact with the circuit foil. This is a > tricky part, you'll see how to solder it when/if you do it! > > A bit of heat shrink over the resistor and wires and its done! > > One has a 50% percent chance of getting it right when you twist it into the > circuit foil, I don't know if these LEDs "pop" if full voltage is applied > "backwards" so I inserted into foil with dash light rheostat turned way > down. > > Well it works, but as Roger found too, the beam is quite narrow and only > illuminates the top half of the gauge. The little reflector assembly might > be modified (foil inside?) but better to have a wider beam spread LED. > > Inserted into the centre position, that is the bulb that lights up the idiot > lights, the LED illuminates all of the icons but not evenly. > > The LED does dim with the rheostat, but does not go out at the > lowest/dimmest setting. > > But I think it was a worthwhile exercise, now I'll go get a range of LEDs > and experiment further. > > Alistair > > -- > '82 Westy -> diesel converted to gas in '94 > albell@uvic.ca > http://members.shaw.ca/albell |
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