Merry Christmas! Now is the time for all good LIONS to go to Walmart and buy LED sets for the train layout. LED technology is growing by leaps and bounds (trying to stay one step ahead of the hungry LION, I suppose). LION was still building signal masts with 30 year old LEDs. Now him try something new.
These sets have a small LED inside of them. The LED is the color of the lens, but not white. White LEDs still cost more money, and so it behooves manufacturers to use the colored LEDs. The new LEDs are almost water clear in the off state, but are very bright and vivid when lit.
The cathode has the shorter lead and the larger flag inside of the plastic. This is the negative pole of the device. The anode then is the longer lead, and the smaller unit inside of the device. It is the positive pole of the device.
This is all well and good, but when you recover LEDs from the lighting sets you may break short some of the leads, so rever back to the actual anode and cathode inside of the LED when you wire them.
When you recover them from the lighting string you can observe several things about them.
First, the plastic housing is keyed, it cannot be installed into the string backwards. Indeed from this picture, you can see one side has longer plastic that the other, and that helps the assembly worker in China insert the LED correctly. If you buy sets from different manufactures you will find that they manage resistance in different ways. Some will have a large plastic housing in series with the set, othere will have little bittity resistors attached directly to the LEDs. These you can ignore while salvaging LEDs, you will just clip them off. But do not try to reverse engineer these sets for 110volt service. That could be very dangerous.
A timely overview, LION. Another source is Lowes, where I found inverted cone warm white 5mm LEDs in strings of 100 a couple of months ago. They had no cover over the LEDs so the LEDs slid out when their wires were straightened.
The really sly, cunning trick is to go shopping for those Christmas strings a day or two AFTER Christmas. The stores are anxious to get rid of unsold holiday inventory and the discounts prove it.
Pre-LED, I scored a bunch of 2.5v lamps pretending to be icicle lights for about two cents a lamp, sockets included, wire extra. It’s actually less expensive to use four in series across the 6.3VAC lighting circuit than to buy and install the proper resistors - and no problem, since I have thousands of them.
I am going to see if this works this year, since most stores are selling almost nothing but LEDs. In past years, a day or two after the holidays, the shelves were bare, except some odd colors no one wanted. However, when strings of 100 are now like 10 bucks regular price, it’s still a steal.
Excellent point. I can recommend this also basis experience with small resistors. In the LED case I wanted immediate supply and Lowes had them. But with resistors I got some U.S. stock quickly through Ebay for immediate use, at a bit higher price plus shipping. Then I ordered more variety from China, lowest price and free shipping, if you’re willing to wait 2-3 weeks. All arrived reliably. Do read the descriptions carefully as some may be sketchy enough that you’re not sure what (watt?) you’re getting. And if you’re lighting structures, check out the 16’ LED strip lighting also, where they can be cut into 3-LED segments that are set up for 12v DC. Also on Ebay.
I just got back from our friendly local Wal*Mart on this day after Christmas. Some observations were that they were selling (clearance) a whole lot of Incandescent mini-light strings, not LEDs but filament bulbs! I had no interest in them, and I’m not sure why people would buy them - they didn’t seem cheaper than the equivalent LEDs, and they run hotter and burn out.
Second, the “cool white” LED strings (strings, to distinguish between decorative holiday lights most lootable for their LEDs, vs ornaments, stars, lighted trees and less fertile sources) were available only in 5mm by one manufacturer (in strings of 100); the “warm whites” came from a different manufacturer in strings of 50 3mm LEDS. Cool White have no hard-to-pull-off covering, while the warm whites do (requiring at least 3 grunts and 5 cusses to remove).
Looks like everything is inverted cone, and the cool whites worked out to be 3.5 cents apiece (excluding labor, of course), while the warm whites were more expensive at 4.8 cents apiece (and more labor, dangit). I’m sure these prices could be beat on eBay, but it seemed cheap enough.
Brother Elias’s idea regarding bottles of different LEDs seems like a good idea, and I plan to implement it, so …maybe you can send in another tip to MR’s Workshop, Brother Elias.
I was searching around a bit about shaping LEDs, and came across this site, which seems a bit behind the times - almost a dollar for 3mm white inverted cone LEDS, while we quibble over a penny difference apiece store vs eBay? OK, they include a 470Ω resistor, but still I must be missing something here…
I have a feeling that the website you referenced is indeed a little behind the times. The latest date I could find on the site was 2011, and at that time $1.00 a piece would not have been a bad price for white LEDs. I noted also that there was no reference to ‘warm white’ LEDs, and none of the lights in their examples were warm in tone.
You can gently bend the leads straight, swap the red for the yellow and if you flip one over you have ± and -+ so when you bend the leads back down * they will be properly oriented to solder together, with your wire. Put it in-line with either leg of your Tortoise and you have a signal protecting your siding. I glue a short piece of coffee stirer with the front cut on the bias for a visor, glue it to a little square of styrene (I’ve used LEGOs) for a base. Cheap and effective!
For facing point you can get yellow/green too.
not all of the LED housings allow you to remove the LED. The ones I got at All Electronics you can. The ones at LEDswitch, you can not.
For making signal heads I find that the 1.6mm axial water clear LEDs are the best. When you bend the leads back they fit inside the Oregon plastic signal head just right. Like Dave, I find the best deals on ebay. I have been dealing here for years and always get good service. http://www.led-switch.com/
