LED (makototsai style) Testing

[Lord Maul]

WTF...why would he steal my signature pic? That is messed up.

What I find funny is how everyone spells his name a little bit different.

[Malaki Skywalker]

WTF...why would he steal my signature pic? That is messed up.

That was my reaction, preeeeetty creepy

[eastern57]

WTF...why would he steal my signature pic? That is messed up.

What I find funny is how everyone spells his name a little bit different.

LOL! "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"

[Darth Leximus]

LOL! "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"


Sorry couldn't resist...I'm going now

[BhujangiJedi]

Well, imagine you're reading some Chinese forum (something you pretty much never do, since you don't know Chinese) and you see a cool sig... you have no idea what it says on it, but the letters look cool, and you're pretty sure no one from that forum is ever gonna be on the English forums you use, so you nab the sig. You don't know if the foreign letters say "I will force-crush your wind-pipe" or if they're actually someone's (nick)name.

But then you go and make some of the baddest-ass sabers and do some nice spin-fu videos and get more than a little popular and even Chinese people are checking out your forums... and noticing that you've nabbed a pic with someone else's sig! Doh!

I'd say just feel flattered he liked your sig... and if it bothers you, ask him to stop using it.

[Novastar]

Right, I imagine "Aluke123" means nothing to him (or whatever the name on the sig is; I quickly looked)...

[Vardarac]

I ordered some polycarbonate last weekend, so I'll see what I can do in the way of diffusion and show you guys how it turns out.

[Eandori]

I quickly skimmed this thread, so sorry if missed some stuff but anyways here's some observations.

1. Novastar was exactly right. If your power/ground rails are on wires that are too thin, their internal resistance will drop the voltage the LED's at the end are receiving. There are many ways to fix this. Novastar suggested one, less biasing resistance as you go down the blade. Also thicker power/ground rails, etc.

2. If you can up the voltage of your battery source, you can do this with MUCH less overall power used. Think of an array of 9 LED's each needing 30mA at 3.8v. If you wire up each one on a single 4.8v rail with it's own resistor, your battery is putting out 270mA at 4.8v Now instead, if you can wire it up so 3 LED's are in series, with just a single biasing resistor for each, you have 11.4v of LED, so with a 12v battery you have 30mA going to 3 sets of 3 LED's for a total of 90mA used. 90mA is a LOT easier on a battery then 270... and this gets more pronounced when you start using hundreds of LED's. In short, you are using more voltage instead of current (current is what heats up your wires and usually fries components) and also you are wasting less power in your baising resistors.

3. Like somebody else was wondering, yes you are basically doing a Hyperdyne setup. You guys will notice that your setups require more voltage, more current, they are way bright, but your batteries don't last long. Your blades will be heavier, and you tell me about durability. Seems like it would not be as durable. Even if it survives a few HARD hits... what about 1000 hits? Bending metal on LED leads is BAD NEWS. Try bending an LED led in your hands 100 times...

[pipster79]

ok, ive read over this thread, and here is the answer to your problems.
1. you need to have seperate banks of leds
2. each led needs its own resistor, but the lead from each led must be soldered before the resistor on the one before it, so each led is resisting the same amount from the main power supply.
wires having resistance? i havent herd of that one before, in the 3 years i took electricity in high school, nor since then. and even if it did...1, or 2, or even 3 feet the resistance would be so minimal that it would make no difference to the naked eye in light.
take christmas tree lights for example...100s of lights from a single power supply, run in series or parallel, they will still be evenly lit. of course parallel is the best way to go, same with a light saber blade, same way mr did there blades. and if you test the resistors on a led strip from mr, you will find that each resistor is the same value...and their blades are evenly lit.

heres a tutorial i found on led string blades that you should find much more easy to understand than the chinese one

http://www.instructables.com/id/Dart...D-light-saber/

[Novastar]

That instructables thing has been around for years. I discovered it back in the day when researching for BOP I and quickly discarded the idea since it was way too fragile, although neat and all.

As to wires having resistance... they do indeed. It's true to some extent that a 1" length of wire has a resistance so small that it would not affect power... but with a wire length of 30" and a gauge that is thin? Yes, it definitely could. EVERYTHING has some form of resistance.

Xmas tree lights do not use a thin gauge of wire. Also, some Xmas tree lights do have a form of driver in there (as I think we all know). Not all of them. Some Xmas lights are still "lamps" and not LEDs as well.

Some MRs I've seen (WITHOUT THE BLADE AND DIFFUSER ON) have shown various levels of brightness from LED to LED. Just my experience (back in 2005).

Finally, Pip--Eandori just said that using a mixture of parallel AND series wiring (a.k.a. "banks of LEDs") could be another solution--and he explained why it'd be somewhat more efficient. Although... NO you do not HAVE to do this. You can if you want to--a point Edwin also mentioned by comparing the two methods.