DIY Illuminated Name letters

[jfm]

I assume I need a fuse inside the junction box before the voltage regulator.

I dunno what the rules n regs say but I hate fuses like that and would bypass it if you supplied it. I prefer breakers located at a central distribution point, so that you can look-see if it has tripped, instead of crawling around the boat removing panels and trying to even remember where all the little local fuses are, urgh

 

[petem]

I dunno what the rules n regs say but I hate fuses like that and would bypass it if you supplied it. I prefer breakers located at a central distribution point, so that you can look-see if it has tripped, instead of crawling around the boat removing panels and trying to even remember where all the little local fuses are, urgh

I like your style but can't help thinking that some people would be less fastidious!

 

[steve930]

I dunno what the rules n regs say but I hate fuses like that and would bypass it if you supplied it. I prefer breakers located at a central distribution point, so that you can look-see if it has tripped, instead of crawling around the boat removing panels and trying to even remember where all the little local fuses are, urgh

Lol on my recently purchased boat I've ditched all random fuses fitted by PO's sprawled around the boat and switched over to breakers located on the local control panels.

SWMBO thought I was losing the plot, I feel a bit more normal now

 

[MapisM]

Lol on my recently purchased boat I've ditched all random fuses fitted by PO's sprawled around the boat and switched over to breakers located on the local control panels.

SWMBO thought I was losing the plot, I feel a bit more normal now

If doing the same that jfm does on his boats makes you feel better, beware.
By replacing fuses with breakers, you are probably still missing 99% of his customization list...

 

[petem]

A question for Jfm, Hurricane and anyone else who tampers wih electrical stuff. Do you solder or use something like Wago connectors?

 

[vas]

A question for Jfm, Hurricane and anyone else who tampers wih electrical stuff. Do you solder or use something like Wago connectors?

probably many wont agree, but I do solder and then use the thermoshrink tubes to hold the thing together. If it's not about to be flexing a lot and hanging about, you should be okay.
I mean if you do solder and then safely tuck the thing away and/or use thermosilicon to keep it in place, there's no problem (in my book at least)
Don't forget we're talking silly currents going through to feed the leds for the letters. mated with a decently small breaker/fuse you should be fine

cheers

V.

 

[jfm]

A question for Jfm, Hurricane and anyone else who tampers wih electrical stuff. Do you solder or use something like Wago connectors?

I don't generally solder but do occasionally where it is sensible - particularly when (1) putting together slightly involved circuits that I want to fit into a small box, and (2) extending a short multicore cable on a gizmo that comes with a short cable dangling fro the back when you need to install it with a longer cable (in which case solder/heatshrink can look a lot neater than crimps/choc blocks). I use plenty of LED strips and always solder the RGB+ cables to the strips because I find the push on connectors cheap and unreliable. Other than that I use crimp connectors (with a proper crimp tool) and screw terminals. I do as much as I can using DIN rail screw terminals (as opposed to chocolate block) and breakers mounted in boxes as this promotes a high quality job imho. I also use Deutsch connectors, because they are nice and because fairline use a lot of them in the build of the boat so it makes sense to be consistent and they are uber high quality and waterproof. I'd vote for being careful with cable sizing and tend to use bigger than needed (due to paranoia about fire on a boat, which is mostly an avoidable reason to find yourself in a liferaft) but that wont be a problem with LED name lighting. I hate Wago connectors - fine for a temporary lash up but not for a permanent installation imho

 

[petem]

Thanks JFM, all understood.

Incidentally, I was talking to an LED Tape manufacturer this afternoon (well their Sales guy to be precise) and he reckons I need airflow over the LED's to stop them overheating. That wouldn't seem to be consistent with how I understand other people make backlit / halo lights etc. Anyone know any different? We'll do some testing of potted lights to see if they get hot.

 

[vas]

Thanks JFM, all understood.

Incidentally, I was talking to an LED Tape manufacturer this afternoon (well their Sales guy to be precise) and he reckons I need airflow over the LED's to stop them overheating. That wouldn't seem to be consistent with how I understand other people make backlit / halo lights etc. Anyone know any different? We'll do some testing of potted lights to see if they get hot.

pete,

generally, leds do heat up but not on the light emmitting side, on the other one, hence the need for heatsinks on the powerleds. However, what you're using is silly led and not of any great output. If you get the right driving circuit you should get them emitting reasonably but not heating up a lot. Further, my understanding is that if you enclose, as in cover/encapsulate them with something the something should help dissipate heat to the surrounding material.
Again in theory, if you could fit them the other way round with the back of the led strip in touch with the SS lettering, using a heat paste thing, they'd be able to dissipate heat to the SS which is exposed to the elements and will be able to keep the letters cool. But then you end up having to use a reflective surface on the hull mounting side of the perspex (which as we discussed already can be dismissed in the opposite orientation of the led installation)
Doubt my last argument is at all necessary, just try it on and leave it running for hours and you'll get a good enough idea of how it performs in real world.

cheers

V.

PS. need pics!

 

[jfm]

Yep there are plenty of applications where LEDs are enclosed. The guy is right that something needs to take away the heat from the LEDs, so you cannot run them in a vacuum, but his mistake is that that that something need not be air reaching the LEDs. In this application your Perspex/potting material/whatever is likely well able to take away enough heat and discharge it to the air

 

[petem]

As requested, here's some pics and a progress report.

As you'll see from the pictures, my colleague had a great deal of difficulty soldering the wires to the terminals to join the individual strips of tape. He attributes this to the following:

1) The waterproofing gel / coating took some effort to melt
2) The terminals became dirty as a result of the above
3) The wires he was using (salvaged from a car witring loom) were too thick.

So the lessons that we've learned are:

1) To use non waterproof LED tape (not an issue for us as we'll be potting the LEDs in some kind of resin - now ordered)
2) To use thinner wires (red and black now ordered)

These soldered joints will be hidden but I'd like to get them looking a lot neater and I'm confident we can.

What did go well was having a letter and channels cut so that the soldering can be done in situ. Obviously you wouldn't want to do that in the final acrylic so we'll make throw away mirror images in MDF for this purpose.

My biggest concern though is the gaps at the top and bottom of the letters. The problem is that the tape can only be cut every 25mm (JTB had a similar issue) therefore it's going to be hard to get even light distribution throughout the letter. I think that in some applications, the tape that we're using might still work but I'm starting to consider Nano lights (http://www.litewave.co.uk/prod_cat/P_nano-led-module-12vdc_339_led-sign-lighting_87.html). They are a lot more expensive but will allow more even spacing and will better cope with scripts and other fonts. Another idea wouldbe to use individually addressable LEDs as these can be cut between each LED (not every three LEDs). Any other suggestions gratefully received.

We're currently waiting for the perspex to arrive, which is rather frustrating as it was ordered 10 days ago. One question I really need answering is what thickness does this layer have to be? Our guess was 15mm but this is a lot harder to obtain than 10mm.

Pete

 

[Whitelighter]

I'd have thought 10mm Perspex would be fine - you don't want the letters to look too bulky

 

[jfm]

Pete,
1.That gel covered LED tape is the wrong stuff. You need the ungelled stuff
2. Yup, soldering is awful!
3. The gaps at ends and at apex of the A are not going to work. You will get dark spots. You need to mill a deeper channel and fold /twist/scrunch the LED tape around the corner, and stuff it close to the ends of the channels. It is ok if the tape is slightly longer than the channel and rouched/stuffed/creased at the end, because it will all be potted. Obviously you cannot scrunch the LED tape that has the gel layer, but you can with plain LED tape or the tape that has a thin spray coating to make it waterproof

I'll measure thickness of my Perspex tmrw and report back

 

[jimmy_the_builder]

Pete,
1.That gel covered LED tape is the wrong stuff. You need the ungelled stuff
2. Yup, soldering is awful!
3. The gaps at ends and at apex of the A are not going to work. You will get dark spots. You need to mill a deeper channel and fold /twist/scrunch the LED tape around the corner, and stuff it close to the ends of the channels. It is ok if the tape is slightly longer than the channel and rouched/stuffed/creased at the end, because it will all be potted. Obviously you cannot scrunch the LED tape that has the gel layer, but you can with plain LED tape or the tape that has a thin spray coating to make it waterproof

I'll measure thickness of my Perspex tmrw and report back

I agree that the gaps are no good, but the prob with scrunching the tape round the corners is that you lose the uniformity of the spacing of the leds. Granted, scrunched will look less bad than gaps - but given that that the led tape can be cut at 25mm intervals, wouldn't a better solution be to rout the mdf/acryllic to more precisely match the cut lengths of the led tape?

 

[jfm]

Hmmm, I think with milky Perspex it is ok if the LEDs are unevenly spaced in a few places. Sure it would be great if you could route the grooves in increments of 25mm but in the real world that is much too big a constraint with all the sizes and font people need to choose from. Eg if you routed the ^ in the A to an integer multiple of 5mm, what about the crossbar? That generally aint gonna be an integer multiple of 25mm. And furthermore, routing the groove to increments of 25mm isn't going to change the need for scrunching around corners, so you may as well scrunch everywhere (in for penny in for pound). All imho

 

[jimmy_the_builder]

Hmmm, I think with milky Perspex it is ok if the LEDs are unevenly spaced in a few places. Sure it would be great if you could route the grooves in increments of 25mm but in the real world that is much too big a constraint with all the sizes and font people need to choose from. Eg if you routed the ^ in the A to an integer multiple of 5mm, what about the crossbar? That generally aint gonna be an integer multiple of 25mm. And furthermore, routing the groove to increments of 25mm isn't going to change the need for scrunching around corners, so you may as well scrunch everywhere (in for penny in for pound). All imho

Yep, fair enough. Another approach I thought about for my own attempt at this was to use a deeper acryllic profile, routed deeply enough to allow the led tape to go in sideways ie with the leds facing out through the sides of the acrylic, rather than facing either the back of the letter or the transom. If you do this you can wind the led tape around all the corners. You do need to double up (ish) the amount of tape you'll use, but it gets rid of a lot of the cuts (and the associated soldering) - in Pete's A for example, you could do the entire letter in a single length.

 

[petem]

On the assumption that the channel runs down the centre line of the letter then there was insufficient length for another 25mm section. I think the individually addressable lights can be cut every 10mm so that would alleviate the issue somewhat. Note that you can buy bendable strip see http://www.ledilluminations.co.uk/p...ights-and-strip-lighting/bendable-led-ribbon/ but it only has cut marks every 50mm. The Nano lights that I linked to above would give loads of flexibility and we could even route fine grooves for the wires and scrunch the LEDs up to give an even distribution around the letter.

 

[Portofino]

Does it have to be LED ?
Would this stuff work -kinda doubled up -for A up one leg across the apex down to the x-bar back across the x-bar ,down the other leg -then back up to apex and back down the leg .So 2x in each channel .Says it can be cut .
Looks easy to do ,with no gaps .
How bright are we looking for ?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2M-5M-Fla...ht-/322017577876?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368

 

[petem]

Yep, fair enough. Another approach I thought about for my own attempt at this was to use a deeper acryllic profile, routed deeply enough to allow the led tape to go in sideways ie with the leds facing out through the sides of the acrylic, rather than facing either the back of the letter or the transom. If you do this you can wind the led tape around all the corners. You do need to double up (ish) the amount of tape you'll use, but it gets rid of a lot of the cuts (and the associated soldering) - in Pete's A for example, you could do the entire letter in a single length.

That had occurred to us too but there will be corners that require a bend where there's an LED or resistor.

 

[jfm]

Does it have to be LED ?
Would this stuff work -kinda doubled up -for A up one leg across the apex down to the x-bar back across the x-bar ,down the other leg -then back up to apex and back down the leg .So 2x in each channel .Says it can be cut .
Looks easy to do ,with no gaps .
How bright are we looking for ?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2M-5M-Fla...ht-/322017577876?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368

Porto I have bought plenty of that and it's nice stuff but its far too dim for this job. You need 10x more lumens per metre than those things produce.