I have stuffed the board with 24 super bright LEDs. In fact I have reused the old ones that are still good. They have a warm tone I prefer. You can see the daughter board "on-edge" in this shot. It has two brass lugs that twist and lock into the power buss holders. The holders can be strung with connecting wires so you can have a string of up to 8 (or more with a higher amp transformer) in series.

A side by side comparison. The one on the left is the new design using the warm LEDs. The one in the middle is using the cooler blue LEDs running on AC. And the one on the right is the AC warm LEDs. I can't tell any difference in brightness between the two warm ones like I thought I could. Since I ran out of the cool-colored LEDs, I can't do a full comparison with those yet.

Milled another 2 boards (total of 5) but am only using 4 right now. Measured the current at 285.5mA (~72mA per module). The transformer is rated 9V 1A, but the voltage is 10.71V. That is 3.05 Watts. Compare that to the 18W package marking.

Things are bright and easy to see again. Now I can get back to my projects.

-Jay

Milling a LED light circuit



For the past couple of years I have been reviving some LED tasks lights I bought at Costco by replacing burned out LEDs. Each modules has 24 LEDs and it's tedious to find the 1 in the series that is the bad one. The circuit is a transformer-less capacitive AC circuit and it so poorly designed/built that the LEDs are being overdriven.

My solution was to redesign the modules for 12V DC using 8 parallel strands of 3 super bright LEDs pulling 18mA per strand. This video shows me cutting out the new and improved circuit board.

Enjoy,
Jay

5/31/2010

Been a long time since I've updated this blog. I have been addicted tot he www.cnczone.com and all thing computer controlled for the last 3 years. I have a CNC router and a desire to make things. You've seen my old Illuminames. I was using bamboo boxes from an outlet store. Next I tried making my own boxes with sliding lids, but those were a lot of work. My new version is a CNC cut box big enough to hold a custom circuit board (also CNC milled).

Here is my latest version make from an Australian red cedar that used to be part of a nice patio set from Costco before the weather and bugs destroyed it. Anyway, I plan to custom make these and sell these with all proceeds going to Autism Solution Center.

Other examples are here.