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LED Tutorial

by
Jess Pulliam

I've been having a lot of success with lighted base sculptures, and wanted to share some technique with you.
This is about getting the most from the RGB (red, green, blue) LED's, which can be purchased from Ken Cox, at 

 www.cpiengraving.com

These have a four wire hookup, and work by one wire being positive, and grounding your choice of any of the others to get the color you want. The basics are red, green, blue, and if you light all three at the same time, you get an interesting version of white. Grounding red and blue gives a nice lavender, red and green gives a green/gold look, and green and blue gives a turquoise sort of color. This can be done by permanently soldering your choice into action, or as I'm going to show you, setting up a switch so all the variables are accessible to your customer.

As an example, I'm going to use a piece I recently made from 1/2" Starphire, and a handmade marble base. Those of you making bases from wood, or other materials will need to adjust accordingly, but the principle will remain.

Preparation Of The Base

After the base is made, and slotted for the glass, near one end, drill a 7/16" hole from the bottom of the slot all the way  through the base. Next, drill a horizontal 7/16" hole from the back, to intersect with the bottom of the slot, and your first hole. If you look into this hole, the roof should be about even with the bottom of the slot. On my marble piece, the drill was too short, so I drilled a couple more holes to connect the tunnels.

We're going to be using the following list of goodies

A D.I.P. switch

A D.I.P. socket

D.I.P. switch in D.I.P socket

Panel Jack

A section of RGB LED's

A soldering iron, a heat sink, some shrink tubing, and a small section of 4 wire telephone wire. I like the phone wire because of its flexibility, strength, and the fact that it is stranded. It's cheap and easy to find, and has never failed me yet.

We'll start out by soldering all four wires to the LED section. You will first have to remove the silicone covering from above the contacts so you can get a good connection. I do this with an Exacto, but any sharp knife will do. Be careful to not cut through the contacts, or you could create a short that's hard to fix.

Determine which outside connection the "hot" side is, and solder your RED wire to that. The other colors do not matter, as long as they each are firmly attached to a connector. I smear a dab of clear silicone on these connections, then seal the whole mess with shrink tubing.

Now, we'll go to the DIP socket, and make those connections. I always use a heat sink on these, to keep the heat from melting them. This one came with my soldering iron, and helps hold the piece stable while soldering.

Now, slide a suitable section of shrink tubing over your wires and attach each of the four wires to a leg of the socket, putting the RED wire on one end. Mark this end so you are sure which end has the "hot" wire. Cover the connection with the shrink tubing.

Next, strip a section of your phone wire, so you have a red and a black wire. Solder the RED wire to the leg directly opposite the red wire you attached earlier (Aren't you glad you marked it?) Then take your black wire, strip 3/16" of the insulation off, bend it into an "L", and securely solder it to all three of the remaining legs. This allows you to "ground" each of those legs by opening the switch. Seal this connection with shrink tubing.

Now we go to the female socket. Here is where I usually install the lights into the base, pull the wires through, and then connect them. Slide a suitable section of shrink tubing over the wires, and solder the RED wire to the center connection ( assuming your connector is "center positive"), and the black wire to the ground side. Slide up the tubing, shrink it, and you have a system!

I use Epoxy to attach these components to my stone bases, and usually touch it up with paint. This one has not been touched up yet, so you can see how the panel jack gets mounted. If the Epoxy you use is too runny, it will get into the jack, ruining it, and sending you on a mining expedition to dig it back out and replace it.

I use the same material to install the DIP switch into the hole in the bottom. You will likely have to open this hole a little larger to fit the switch. I have an old switch that I ruined a long time ago, and use it to install the socket. I wet it well with WD40, fill the hole half up with epoxy, and stuff the whole works down until it is flush with the bottom. As it sets up, trim and clean off the excess epoxy, pull out the dummy switch and stick a good one in. Should the switch ever go bad, (remember the Pepsi syndrome) you will be able to wiggle it out and replace it. I then cut a piece of self adhering felt, cut out a hole for the switch, and call it done.

Here's a picture of the one I've been making here...

And here is a short parts list, to maybe help you in ordering parts:

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WWW.JECOGLASS.COM

 


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