Led-Strip Blade with 4 Strips, Diffusion, comparison, general review

Hey guys,
some weeks are over now since I started my blade-building projects. It was lots of fun, but of course partly horribly frustrating to some degree too, I tried alot of diffusion materials, different PVC types and my goal was nothing less than building the brightest LED-Strip Blade ever seen.
So of course I was into going for 3 strips at least until I found a shop that had an acrylic fourangled rod 8mm where i could install 4 sk 6812 strips onto.
After some fails I really accomplished to get it running with the tcss v2 11pins connector and a 30 amps unprotected 3120mah 18650.
There were two seconds I was so proud to watch it lighting up but after that i was instantly disappointed as ..ing hell..
No way to diffuse it properly without heavy corncobbing to a degree where I had to get so much more diffusing material that it was much dimmer than any of my 2 strip blades so that the whole project was dead for me.
The point is: even with the same diffusion material of my 2 strip-blades, which are really sophisticated near to perfection meanwhile I can say proudly, that 4-strip blade with that bad corncobbing wasnt even much brighter to the human eye.
So, if you wanna build a stupid bright blade I can tell u ALL: forget about more strips or going for adafruits instead of chinese ones... IT´S ALL ABOUT DIFFUSING YOUR 2 STRIPS.
Original adafruits wont be brighter than cheap ones, as long as they work at all..just more reliable;)
Forget the W2182bs, these 11 or 12 mms will always give u some kind of shadow at least in comparison to the 7.5 mm sk 6812s.

In terms of diffusion I can tell you all, and I can´t stress enough: TCSS did a FCKN AWESOME JOB on these plastic diffusors and foam-diffuser-tubes. I tried so many different things, of course all mixed into different variations, from toilet paper to clear package tape, christmas-gift clear-foil, cellophane, tcss corbin film, 1mm package foam, 2mm package foam, TCSS foam, heatshrinks, special LED-enhancing fckn expensive scotch tapes.
The closest you can get to a blade without shadowzones and without corncobbing and still as bright as possible is to glue a strip of doublesided 6mm clear tape onto both sides of the doublestrips, straight over the 5mm lightemitting sections, then you glue a selfcut 6mm strip package foam onto these. Then you wrap that into 4 to 5 layers of clear package tape and put this into the foam diffuser from the TCSS shop, try to get a snug-fit, if not go for more layers of tape.

After that it´s up to you: you can either wrap that foam now into 4 layers of clear package tape again for a snug-fit and put it into a transwhite thickwalled blade, so you dont need the plastic diffuser and you will have a perfectly even lit transwhite duelready blade. Yes, trust the transwhites, they do a nice diffuserjob there. But not the thinwalleds unfortunately.
Or you put the foam diffuser into the plastic diffuser and get it into a photon or clear blade and you are good to go without shadow zones or any corncobbing.

At last I have to say: I am a bit disappointed by these photonic tubes. It´s not only that I don´t like that light-in-a-tube-look, I clearly love these transwhite thickwalled blades most, they give that perfectly even-lit look and make the blade look fuller. Also you can drill out a white tip with a hand-dremel so that it´s lit with the last pixel in it and it looks the same as the blade, lit or unlit.
It´s just... that photon doesn´t make it so much brighter as many postulate it. It has a nice color on blue only, a very unique green, but with green and blue together it won´t be so much brighter at all, so don´t be too disappointed if you go for the photonic-strip blade. There´s a great difference in having more lumen on a blade and seeing it with human eyes.
Not to be able to have all colours going that a prizm 5.1 offers you is not worth that marginal clue of more brightness to that photon-blade, sorry to say. >overhyped:(

Sorry, I don´t have photos or videos on this but I can guarantee you that it won´t help anyhow, a blade on camera and in real is just too much difference to tell anyone which one is brighter or more evenly diffused, you simply cant recognize it if it´s about the last fine corrections for perfection.

I hope I could help some of you with enthusiastic projects on blade-builds, may the force and brightness be with You

well, for demonstration purpose and that you see yourself what I mean I decided to give you some images of my two best blades. First one is the photon blade, first ignition with blue only, second illuminated one with blue and green both together, the brightest blade I built so far. But as I told you.. it´s marginal.
Second blade is my favourite one, its a transwhite with a white drilled out tip and two pixels lit in the tip. First illuminated one is in bright surrounding, second one in darkness. The photo is made with a green colour only, for comparison with the photon blade and because green will always be brightest for human eyes. There is not that much difference in brightness, at least not that much that I hoped for the photonblade, the transwhite looks much fuller and of course if not lit it looks not like that hollow-tube-optic thing. Just my favourite

https://ibb.co/b130de
https://ibb.co/dG0kBz
http://ibb.co/hyJBjK
http://ibb.co/dTjvBz
http://ibb.co/b1frjK
https://ibb.co/gZ96Je

comparison to inhilt tricree blue-blue-white
https://ibb.co/dDpFDe

uhm well in my opinion i came to a point where I can´t see anything more that would help to get blades any brighter or better diffused in a similar constellation with neopixel strips. If anyone made similar experiences or has found better ways of diffusion or for more brightness so far I would love to discuss it in this thread of course

Well, to point out obvious things that many elders have been pointing out for ages...

1. More isn’t always better. It applies to Quads versus Tri’s and it also applies to LED strips.

2. Photo Blades are work best with BLUE LIGHT, not Cyan, not Royal Blue, not Indigo, straight blue. Anything else will generate interesting results, but is likely to leave many “disappointed”.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Forgetful Jedi Knight

Well, to point out obvious things that many elders have been pointing out for ages...

1. More isn’t always better. It applies to Quads versus Tri’s and it also applies to LED strips.

2. Photo Blades are work best with BLUE LIGHT, not Cyan, not Royal Blue, not Indigo, straight blue. Anything else will generate interesting results, but is likely to leave many “disappointed”.

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1. I'll have to disagree with you on Quads versus Tris. Assuming you have a quad PCB that has four individual dies (rather than under one dome) and your PCB and lens are both machined to fit inside your 1" heat sink, you'll have an RGB saber that can make brighter colors on one side of the spectrum depending on whether your extra die is red, green, or blue. An extra red die will give you brighter reds, oranges, yellows, crimsons, and pinks while an extra blue die will give you brighter blues, cyans, and purples. An extra green die will give you brighter shades of green. In my experience, I've never seen mixing issues with this kind of setup either.

2. Agreed that straight blue is the BEST for Photon blades, but just wanted to say that Royal Blue gets the job done pretty well too.

Quote:

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I'll have to disagree with you on Quads versus Tris. Assuming you have a quad PCB that has four individual dies (rather than under one dome) and your PCB and lens are both machined to fit inside your 1" heat sink, you'll have an RGB saber that can make brighter colors on one side of the spectrum depending on whether your extra die is red, green, or blue. An extra red die will give you brighter reds, oranges, yellows, crimsons, and pinks while an extra blue die will give you brighter blues, cyans, and purples. An extra green die will give you brighter shades of green. In my experience, I've never seen mixing issues with this kind of setup either.

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Well thats definitely sure. But what Forgetful Jedi Knight and I mean is more like what happens from two same-coloured LEDs on two more
Of course a second red will definitely do a good job in enhancing brightness, but the more of them you try to add, the less effect on perceived brightness you will get. Add a third or even a fourth same-coloured die and the results are neglectable.
So here´s where Forgetful Jedi Knight´s Law of diminishing returns grip, i.e. Meatsweats Stevens Power Law and Weber-Fechner Law. Brightness is not perceived in a linear rise for the human eyes, from a certain point of basis-illumination you will need 10 times more lightpower to perceive it only 30 percent brighter.
Thats what we talk about and it definitely applies for Tri-Cree and Quad-LEDs too..

Sure. Having two LEDs of the same color is a noticeable difference. But if you're trying to have three or four of the same color, that would be marginal.

I guess I was stuck in RGB thinking, so I probably misunderstood what he was saying. I guess some people do still make single color sabers don't they? ;)

Just to point out. I’ve tested various strips and 5050 is brighter (actual) than 3535 via lux meter testing. Something like green 2k v 3.2k or so. Perceived (based on our other convo) brightness is also noticeable. I do trim my ws2812 to about 9mm and I have no shadowing with the method I use.

I know it´s a bit brighter but I didnt accomplish to let these side shadows flow out completely into evenness on to a point where I had to put so much material more that it was dimmer than the 3535s.
please tell me your diffusion method. Do you trim it from both sides?

I trim the strips on each side a mm or two. TCSS clear thin walled tube, TCSS firm diffuser, foam tube, a couple feet of cellophane.