Cool Circuit Board

[Tavel]

I made a bunch of these little circuits because I had a bit of scrap PCB and some LED's...I don't know what they'll be used for, so I decided to spray paint them!

but I only painted the backside. the paint over sprayed to the trace side and then came off with the toner mask, leaving this cool effect.

I hope some of you will agree, this is pretty cool looking...



(I should've put a coin in for scale, but those are 5mm LED's.)

it took me like 4 hours to make 5 of these, it only takes 10-15 minutes to solder them (tough work with my $9 radioshack iron). The rest of the time was mostly spent drilling holes (I'm switching to surface mount once I get my new soldering iron). I would have made a sixth...but ran out of scrap PCB. At least it was fun! lol.

[Mike19]

disco lights for your aquarium jokes, they look cool its been a while since i did any of that i see the resister and led's and pcb printed circuit board right. haha

[Fla_Larry]

what input volt level did you set them for? plan on using them for lunar lights etc?

I have see the effect of the blue ones and the white ones, i really liked the dim white, looked very realistic, just like a full moon night

oops a 100 ohm forgot to look at the resistor never mind
9volt ... if i did that right anyways

[Tavel]

12v actually, remember white/blue LED's drop 3.3v.

I'm under driving at 25ma because radio shack didn't have 80 ohm resistors (and I'm not going to order parts when i'm just goofing around).

I was thinking of seeing how they look in the goldfish tank, but probably not nearly bright enough (it takes 3 hi power LED's to light a 10g)...so I'll be looking into making some kind of work lamp or something.

[Fla_Larry]

very cool, was not aware they had a 3.3 FVD, have not looked up the specs so figured 2.3v and 25ma for regular, thats what happens when ya assume lol.
anyways, how many total you putting in? and what kind of light levels are you expecting.

I am contemplating using the white to create the dim full moon appearance. i think it looks very nice, i have seen the blue night/lunar lighting, very nice as well, was just impressed with the very dim white, just not sure how many across 48", am thinking like 4 or so. The 50 corner will prob be a tad easier, more depth less width.

[Tavel]

they'll probably be fine for moonlighting. I have a LED conversion in the DIY section if you're looking for something a little more awesome.

Use powers of three though, that works best for white/blue LED's. 3 or 6 will be fine I'd lean towards 6 because you can always under volt them if they're too bright.

definitely use white LED's too, moonlight is actually the same color as sunlight...just much dimmer so we can't process most of the color.