Jumbo RGB LED

January 17, 2022

At the end of last year, I was working on a project for Element14 Presents that combined woodworking, power electronics and high powered LEDs. I upscaled an RGB LED 100 times from 5mm to 500mm. There were a few parts blown up during the creation of the project and I had to make sure I had suitably sized heatsinks on the LEDs that were taking a good 700mA each. A good case for having current limiting on my power supply.

The case was created using laminated MDF sheets, I used the router circle jig to create the circles and the lowest layer was done freehand with the router. The holes for the LEDs were cut using a forsner bit. The feet were simple 2×4 offcuts that I cut to be L shaped. These were sprayed silver and glued to the back. A 3D printed box was added to mimic the chip on the real device, I simply screwed that in place with some woodscrews. For testing I also created a 3D model for a tray to hold the Arduino Uno on top of my breadboard. That needs a bit of fine-tuning and perhaps I should screw down the board, but it worked well enough.