DIY Ringlight

Hello everyone,

As you guys already know I have made a ringlight

https://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-LED-Ring-Ligh...

This the second version much professional looking one

this the second version of the ring light

which is much user friendly and much brighter

however its little tougher to build but not impossible.If I can make it anyone can

Step 1: Part List

1) 6 MM aluminum sheet

2) 3 Meters thick copper Wire

3 Toggle Switch

4) 1x Xt60 Male & female connectors cheaper option 4X Dean connectors

5) DC-DC boost converter Constant Current Mobile Power supply 10A 250W LED Driver

6) LED dimmer

7) Surface mount flushed out led panel LED Aluminium body OUTER DIAMETER 22 CM

8) 4MM led

9) 25x 5 watt SMD led

10) acrylic

11)spebb

12) solder

13 thermal compound,

14) gang box(used for cctv camera)

15)1x 2 pin terminal block

Step 2: Cutting the Aluminium

First thing you need to do is cut 6MM sheet which work as a base for the leds.

8 inches outer diameter(you can also use bigger diameter as per your requirement however then you will need more leds ). I used 8 inch outer diameter because that the max my lathe machine could take & 4 inches inner diameter.

Step 3: Place the Leds

Once the aluminium is cut just place the leds in circle just to get the idea of how many leds you will need

in my case it came up to 21 led which was a odd number and I had a lot of trouble with it Which you will see in the later part of the video.

Step 4: Marking the Leds

Once Place the leds I made marking on the holes of th SMD led so that I could drill a hole on the plate

used a permanent marker .

had to make total 42 holes

and tap drilled all the holes so the screws can go in easily

Step 5: Placing the Plate in a Case

I didn't want the whole led to look naked so wanted something to cover it up from the outside

so for that i used a Surface mount flushed out led panel LED Aluminium body OUTER DIAMETER 22 CM

I wish I had got something from scrap but had purchase a led and remove the outer frame.never the less it was worth it.I used the flushed out led panel body,this will work like a body for my ring light.

placed the Plate on the body and took the markings to drill holes on the aluminium plate in order to keep the plate and body together.

Step 6: Placing the Led

Now once the markings are done it was time to place the leds.

I generously applied thermal compound on the led and placed all the leds one by one

and then tightened all the LED using screws

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ITS RECOMENDED TO TEST ALL THE LEDS BEFORE PLACING

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Step 7: Solder the Wires

Once the leds are place it was time to solder the leds

this was a the difficult part as I had to calculate the voltage Im going use

My first idea was to use pair of 2 Leds with 10 parallel in each

that didn't work as it had 21 led so what I did is Made a series of 3 led group with 7 in each

please check the Diagram for reference as it will give you a brief idea of how I did it

As you are going to use approximately 32 Volts so used Mains wire stripped the wire off and then started soldering

and after each joint soldered i used heat shrink tubing to cover the naked wire to avoid any contacts

Once I soldered everything I used a continuity test to check for any short circuits ( ITS RECOMMENDED.).

Once thats done I too a long wire connected a Positive and GND of the LEDs which go in to the power supply

Step 8: Test the Ringlight

Once the LED are soldered I connect the Rig to output of the boost converter and the input of the boost converter

to laptop power supply of 20 volts

Before go live make sure the boost converter voltage is set to zero

then start turning it till you reach the optimum brightness

and also check the voltage & amps you are feeding the LEDS you don't want the leds to overheat and burn out

Once thats done just go ahead and check the brightness.

i used a 35V 8A boost converter

In my case the optimum voltage was 31 volts with 1.3 Amps power supply

it was perfect.

Step 9: Power Supply

Now there are two options to it

OPTION 1

I used a 20 volts 3amps laptop powersupply and boosted the voltage using a boost converter.

OPTION 2

2nd option is a Portable power supply so that you can use it outdoors aswell

I built a rechargeable power supply for using it outdoors

I will show you the making of it in next project

Step 10: Fabrication Part

Now I knew it works so the rest of it was the fabrication part.

I still had to make inner walls for the inner diameter of the ringlight

For this I cut Acrylic in circle with inner diameter of 4 inches and outer diameter of 5inches

the alternatives are t use a wood get an acrylic of exactly 6CM thickness which will be really not worth it

so took a 5MM thick acrylic and cut a few circles and stacked it one above the other(Height of 1 Inch) to make the inner wall

please the images for reference.

Step 11: Camera Rig Fabrication

Now I had to make a rig which will hold my camera and the ring light

With My luck I had few pieces of aluminum plates from my previous epic Fail projects

Please see the diagram for reference if you want to build the same or I can recommend you to go for Pre built rig

Or take an aluminium strips

38 cm long ,5.3cm width, 3mm thick

22cm long,

5.3cm width, 3mm thick

once its cut i gave it for powder coating

Step 12: Custom Rig for Connecting Tripod Head to Another Tripod

For more flexibitly in using the ring light while connecting to a tripod

i made a connector bolt to connect the fluid mount tripod head to my tripod

which gave me a great amount of flexibility.

Step 13: Enclosure of the Circuits

Everything is done except for putting the circuit in a secure place

so I took a gang box and made a cut in the centre to fix a heat sink for the boost converter,.

I used 2 pin L terminal block for the power input & Xt60 connector at the power output please see the images for reference

Step 14: Final Step

Once everything was done I I tested it and

Some mistakes which could be avoided in my case I realized I could have put more leds to make it extreme

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