Introduction: LED-Powered Ornamental Light


The ordinary Tea-stove lights are a bit boaring to illuminate ornamental-type or decorativ windlights. Because the shadows of the well shaped perforation is quite blurred at the wall.

So I decide to develop something sophisticated in Function, technical Design and extendable behavior.
The rough materials are Chilling-Parts form old Computer-Boards, High-Power-LEDs and a view spare electronic Parts for powering the LED for the case of my first study.
Besides my wife has delivered this wounderful ornamental designend Windshield-Lamp

Step 1: Parts Required


The main Part to build this illumination is the LED.
I used an emitter from  SEOUL with 1W and quite warm color of light. This will produce the more ambient specific light for using in living-rooms.
An other type, I tried yet, is a LUMILED-III from Philips/Osram as it was built-in by former Front-Lights of Audi R8. This also works quite well, but I preferred it for illumination of outside placed lanterns due to its tremendous light-emission.
Both types are premounted on thin-board covered ALU-HEXAPOD Heatspreaders.
Have a look at your local electronics-dealers offers in High-Power-LEDs. I used some from elv.de or others from reichelt.de to order by internet-shops.

The second part, necessary to operate a High-Power-LED is the ambient-Heatspreader. I used spare parts from old Computer-Boards. Where the CPU-Chilling is quite overdesigned, the older Graphical-Board or Northbridge is a quite well source of propriate parts. For my taste i preferred the black ones, but red or green colored may also be interesting.
To mount the LED you will need some tiny screws and heat-contact-grease.

To power the LED you need a few electronic Parts to search for. I took a Resistor with 18 Ohm for the miner LED (SEOUL) and a standard DC-Power-Plug with a bit more than 5V. For the other Type LUMILED-III I used a 4,7Ohm Resistor and the same DC-Powersource.
To insure the LED against reverse current, I used a Diode like 1N4001 in serial junction with Resistor an LED.
For higher efficency it is possible to use a PWM-driven Coil.

Step 2: Tools


For building the electric-stove you should have at least:

- Mechanical Equipment to drill holes into Aluminium, Drilling grease (ISO-Alcohol) and propriate drilling bits.
- Prepare the holes with measuring equipment and a center-punch-tool.
- Equipment to cut screw threads. I used a M3-sized bit to fit for the short M3-countersunk-Head.

- Soldering Iron - best practiced with thermal regulation, soldering tin or lead-alloy.
- some wires, electric bread-boards, pliers, diagonal-cutter
- also a board-holder will ease the work.

Step 3: Assembling

Now you are ready to assemble all together.
Have al look at the Datasheet of your Power-LED, used for your application, to find the right values for the components.
Be carefull to reverse currents and have a look at the pole-signs at the Parts before leading.

Dont overheat the sensitive Diode-Parts during leading.

Dont screw the heatspreaders to hard and all-side equally to prevent distortion.
Be sure to use a very small amount of heat-contact-grease between Heatspreader and Thermal sink.

So you are done.

I for myselves am thinking about a more efficient driver than the used resistor-Methode and about an electical controlled current-distribution for generating different colors on RGB-Type LEDs.

Step 4: Enjoy

Now you are ready to cover the LED-assembly whith your wind-sheeld Lantern an Enjoy

Thank you for reading this instructable.