Color? Cree? UV? What? YAY!

[Zero Unit]

Where be those pictures? :P

I was investigating UV LEDs, including the one mentioned here, and I stumbled across this:

http://www.ledengin.com/ledengin_products-dataLZ.html

5W, 10W, and 15W LEDs, in Blue, Royal (Dental) Blue, Green, Red, White, and UV (405nm peak).

Here's the data sheet for the 5W UVs:
http://www.ledengin.com/products/5wLZ/LZ1-00UA05.pdf

My question is: are there any optics for it?

Anyone want to give one of these a spin (if optics can be located or if existing ones will fit)?

[X]

Has anyone tried using red or blue cellophane with a red or blue led. Or put both red and blue cellophane with a white LED? I'm really new at all this.

[Ghostbat]

Has anyone tried using red or blue cellophane with a red or blue led. Or put both red and blue cellophane with a white LED? I'm really new at all this.

If you don't mind the loss of brightness you can do all kinds of crazy things with filters. A lot of us are bright-junkies so the thought kind of icks us, but I have seen really good results from doing so and if you need an odd color and don't want to deal with rgb luxeon color mixing it's the way to go.

[Hasid Lafre]

Yeah color diffusing a colored led wont work very well. its gonna be crap.

Colored celophane or polyP with a whit led like the p4 led is an awsome idea cause during the day it will look colored and still light up colored when on.

I may try this someday.

[Chowser]

what's the best way to mount the 17mm star CREE?

It won't fit on the regular sized heatsink

[xwingband]

Thermal tape or epoxy. Tape is easier and a better bet to prevent grounding out. Sometimes computer stores will carry the tape for video or RAM heatsinks.

[darthdan]

So I put one of the UV led's from kaidomain in a saber and I was significantly not blown away. I overdrove it considerably, putting 6V and 2A straight to it, and it was not even as bright as a Lux3. It did have kind of a cool effect though. I used a thickwalled blade with Tim's diffuser and it made the saber kind of blueish purple. The diffuser showed purple, but the blade itself(the polycarb) turned blue. So it was kinda weird. Not great brightness-wise, but interesting.

[Ghostbat]

So I put one of the UV led's from kaidomain in a saber and I was significantly not blown away. I overdrove it considerably, putting 6V and 2A straight to it, and it was not even as bright as a Lux3. It did have kind of a cool effect though. I used a thickwalled blade with Tim's diffuser and it made the saber kind of blueish purple. The diffuser showed purple, but the blade itself(the polycarb) turned blue. So it was kinda weird. Not great brightness-wise, but interesting.

Most of the light in those is in the UV range so most of it's "brightness" is not visible to the human eye.

Be careful though, the light is still there and it is bouncing off the back of your eye without your eye being able to defend itself. You can do real damage to your eye with these things so please read up on them thoroughly and try not to look at the bare LED. I don't know enough to say whether or not the blades diffusion is enough to protect you but I suspect it might be. I have brought this up before and I will probably bring it up again because I would feel like a complete jerk if I didn't and someone screwed up their eyes.

I got close to messing myself up with some standard UV LEDs, not nearly as powerful as these. Fortunately a friend of mine who works more with electronics warned me in time to leave me with a nasty headache and dry feeling eyes and not retinal scarring.

My disclaimer: I am not an expert on this, just passing on the warning I am very glad I got. I'm also not trying to say "don't play with UV LEDs" I am just trying to say know the dangers, read up on them, and then play safe.

[Darth_DevilGuy]

UV LED's are interesting, but honestly I don't think they'll pan out for sabers, as ghostbat said most of their output is in the UV range, what you see as purple light is actually excess energy, most of the power goes into light you can't even see.

[Hasid Lafre]

I dont htink these leds put off enought lv light to effect your vision or they would have to sell them with a warning bigger than life.