Light on the Subject

Completed LED Wiring

Okay.  Sorry there are no pictures of the wiring process.  I wired the blade LED unit more on a spur of the moment kind of thing.  Basically, I needed a measurement for an emitter plug and decided that I might as well wire the LED while I was at it.  There would be pictures, but I didn't take the camera out with me that day, so you guys only get the finished product.

The LED is wired with each color die being independently wired rather than being in parallel or series.  This gives me the ability to take advantage of an additional color mixing board rather than one board running (essentially) one channel.

Anyway, here's what the LED unit looks like all set up to be put in the saber.

The unit is encapsulated in an aluminum cover (the gray part) that holds the focus crystal in front of the LED dies and a copper heat sink back that screws into the aluminum cover.  It's a sandwich: aluminum, then focus crystal, then LED board, then thermal tape (to allow thermal transfer to the copper), then the copper.  You may notice that the wires are paired and twisted.

I twist and pair wires when I wire a DC circuit.  To me, it keeps the wires tidy and makes sure that they go to the right places when wired to boards.

The part I'm sure you're interested in more than my wiring technique is whether they light up and what they look like.  Well, until I get the entire unit wired, you'll have to make due with pictures taken running off the diode test on my multimeter.  I'm pretty sure it's test mode is significantly dimmer than they will be wired as a unit.

Here's red.  Note that the multimeter actually says a voltage of 1.679.

Here's the green die.  The multimeter registers the voltage for it and the blue in the overload position - I guess they really want more power.

And finally blue.

Where to next?

From here, I have a bit more to do.  First, the measurement I took after making the LED unit is to make a safety plug for the emitter so that no one gets blinded by an accidental turn on of the saber.  The rumor is that these are close to Class 2 lasers when lit and I'm kinda attached to seeing things.

I'm also making a shroud for the saber.  There's also a whole process for making it look weathered.  The crystal chamber needs to be built and fleshed out.  All the internal wiring needs to be drawn up and wired and arranged in the saber.  I'm making a insulator for the internals so they won't short to the body.  And then, I'll probably have a complete saber.  At which point, I am thinking of making my first youtube video introducing my saber - we'll see (I don't really like how I sound on video :P).