How to Design Your Own LED Lamp

LEDs are very energy efficient.

LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) have come a long way since they first appeared in electronic devices. It's now possible to light a room with high-intensity LEDs. That's good news for energy conscious consumers since LEDs have many advantages over incandescent bulbs. For starters, incandescents are about 20 percent efficient while LEDs approach 80 percent. LEDs also have a life of approximately 100,000 hours (11 years) but incandescents burn out in about 5,000 hours. It won't be long until LEDs are the best bang for your buck, but you can try them out now with a "do it yourself" lamp.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Dead 9 volt battery
• Utility knife
• Wire cutters
• 3 high intensity white LED's (25.000 mcd - 3.8 volt and 20 mA - 35 degrees)
• Felt tip markers (red and black)
• Needle-nose pliers
• Soldering gun
• Solder
• Fresh 9 volt battery

1. Remove the top of the dead battery. Use your utility knife to carefully cut the dead battery open below its terminal cap. Now get your wire cutters and snip the solder joints connecting the terminal cap to its battery cells and pull off the cap.

2. Mark and trim the LED legs. To get your connections right, mark the plastic at the base of the long legs (positive-anode) on your three LEDs with the red marker and the short legs (negative-cathode) with the black marker. Now bend the left legs of each LED left and the right legs right with your needle-nose pliers. Snip off the excess with your wire cutters so that the legs can overlap a bit without keeping you from getting the LEDs close to each other. Leave the outer legs of the outer LEDs untrimmed (one should be red and the other black).

3. Solder the LEDs together. Line up your three LEDs side-by-side so that the untrimmed legs are on the outside and the four trimmed legs are touching with the negatives (black) connected to the positives (red). Now get your soldering gun and quickly put a dab of melted solder on the positive-negative connections. The three LEDs will be connected with an untrimmed negative (black) leg on one side and an untrimmed positive (red) leg on the other.

4. Mount the LEDs to the battery top. Trim the outer legs of your LED cluster so they're just long enough to rest on the back of your battery cap terminals. Now put your LED cluster on the side of the battery cap opposite the terminals so that its positive (red) leg is touching the back of the large slotted terminal and its negative (black) leg is touching the back of the small round terminal. With your legs in position, quickly solder them to the terminals to attach your LED cluster to the cap.

5. Attach the battery top to the fresh battery. Snap one terminal of the LED cluster cap to the terminal that fits it on your fresh battery. To turn the lamp on and off just swivel the free side of the cap until its terminal makes or breaks contact with the fresh battery.

Tips & Warnings

• Solder your joints as quick as you can to avoid overheating the LEDs.

References

• Alternative-Energy-Resources.net; LED Lighting DIY; Wayne
• LC LED Corporation: Advantages of LED Lights
• Grynx.com; Versatile Compact 9V LED Lamp; Chris J; April 18, 2006