Make your own colored LEDs

There are many instructables about how to make 'Throwies'.
For this to have a nice effect you need loads of different color LEDs.

I found it a bit frustrating to find colored LEDs. And when I found them they were more expensive then a normal white LED.

Thats why I thought there had to be an easier and cheaper way. Though thinking about it for a long while the answer was more simple then I thought.

Follow these simple steps to create your own colored LEDs!

Step 1 Materials & Tools

All you need for this is:

- White LEDs
- Sand paper (fine, between 200 and 400)
- Color markers

Once you've got these things you're ready to start!

I bought 100x 5mm LED white on eBay for only $7 (including shipping).
So that's only $0,07 for each LED. You won't get colored LEDs this bright for that price!

Comments

[kennethwhiz]

Another way to color and diffuse the light would be a glass frosting spray paint. Most leds, unless you buy the diffused, send most of the light up through the top, but by spraying on a glass frosting paint, it sends the light in different directions. I don't know if they make colored paint of that kind, but i know the frosting paint with make your clear leds diffused! :-)

[fpavlovi]

RGB (Red Green Blue) is the way we see, these 3 colors combined give white color.
Green is 39% of white,
Red is 36% of white,
Blue is 25% of white.
That is why the green color seems the brightest.

[zegond]

lol nice job pal! u made me really laugh by this simple but great trick!

[technoguy94]

Interesting, though normal colored LEDs produce a little better colored light.

[Mavamaarten]

True, but I used this to create blue LED's.
These are very hard to find here...  (for some reason, I don't know why :P)

[jwoo2023]

blue are the most expensive and hard to find

[Jedrokivich]

Green seems the brightest though because the eye is naturally more sensitive to green light.

[Mot878]

how do i get it to light up?

[xXSaber96Xx]

You take the LED's and put the long stick on top and the shorter one on the bottom, (some even work vise versa) on a watch battery and they'll light up

[Gaoh]

nice Instructables!
especially the diffused LED.
and i thought LED lighting can't be different (until now that is).

one question.. using sand paper on LED, will it reduces its quality?
cause i keep having mine get burned or its brightness reduced after a few days on normal condition.

thanks, sorry for bad english.
thumbup!

[anarky2k]

I dont think the sand paper affects the led....
try using resistors always!!!.....normaly i use 220 ohm on each led, no matter the number of leds....maybe u already knew that but still

[Gaoh]

not really understand about resistors actually, since i'm a beginner in LED stuff.
and that's a big help, thank you.

[anarky2k]

when u use a resistor on a LED....u basically just protect ur LED from burning out or draining your battery too quickly......of course not all resistors are the same, u have to choose ur resistor acording to the type of LED your using, and the volts and amps ur source gives out

[Gaoh]

wow, i didn't know those little thing could make big difference to LED.
in that case, i'll work on my upcoming projects with resistors.
thanks again.

[qazwsx755]

Awesome Instructable. I think I will make a purple one because my friend wants me to change the power light on his gamecube to purple and I don't have any purple leds. Go to www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Replace-The-Power-Light-In-Your-Nintendo-Ga/ if you want to see how you change the power light on your gamecube.

[junits15]

if the gcn light, it still orange it wont work, you need to get a 3mm white 1 first

[qazwsx755]

I'm going to replace the orange led with a white led colored purple. By the way it doesn't have to be a 3mm led it can be 5mm.

[junits15]

from my experience a 5mm doesn't allow the case to close all they way, when i did it it left a small crack under the conroller port panel

[qazwsx755]

You need to make room for the led by using a drill and a 3/16" drill bit and drilling down about 1/8" into the dimple located on the translucent peice of plastic.

[ninjanody]

i will use sandpaper from now on to diffuse my leds... thanks mate...

[techturtle2]

I was gunna do this but when I was at my radioshack they didnt have a single white led! but i did get a package of 20 leds(6 red 6 yellow 6 green 2 amber) for $1.99!!!!!! What a steal!!! but the price on li ion cr2032s is $11.39 for 3! I made a mega mutant throwie w/ 12 leds on it!

[nadav]

I think that sanding the led not only diffuses the leds but, allows the markers to stay on better.

[Marsanni]

Great idea. i like this. I've tried it a few times, and you can make patterns on the LED with different colored markers and they look uber.

[MACKattacksnipe]

Good Idea except White Leds are not cheap it better to just by the colored to begin with

[Redgerr]

i was quite supprised at how bright it was after sanding. pretty sweet.

[micobanff]

Hey! Thanks a lot! I just bought a bunch of 10mm red LEDs for a project, but was disappointed when I realized they were clear casing and not red! They looked terrible in my prototype (an LED matrix) but this well help A LOT!

[bideogame]

very nice =)

[codongolev]

for mass production, most markers have a little tube filled with some sort of material inside. it's like cotton or something: it doesn't really matter. but what you could do for ease of coloring is take the marker apart and then just jam the led into the felt/cotton stuff and twist it. that would take, like, five times faster and give you a better result. 

[wocket]

great idea! you could use multiple colours as well, bands, dots, stripes :) I'll have to try it.

[williamrhart]

Simple but effective! Great Job.  Congrats.

[lorijt]

Just a thought but this little ibble would let you have any color like purple or orange depending on what color markers you have. Also I would suggest using indelible markers.  

[bomberman3]

Inedible? But what if I get hungry?......

[frollard]

Good ible to use what you have on hand:  but really coloured leds were out first; white is a new 'more expensive' iteration that is really a blue led that has a phosphor coating which converts some to various wavelengths in order to make what looks like visible white.

Simple red, green, and blue leds can be had easily for a dime a piece:
Green 5mm 100 pack 9 bucks shipping includes 100 resistors
Assorted 5mm 100 pack same deal
Orange ...8.50
Infrared 7
Red  8.50
White ...7 dollars same deal, slightly cheaper

How much are those markers and hours of your time worth sanding and colouring individual leds at 2 cents difference each...I'm sure I could find cheaper; but its just ironic to create one colour, fluoresc to multiple colours in the spectrum, then filter out the unwanted colours to get just one colour :D

[motadacruz]

Thanks for the compliment.

I have to point some things to your story.
The white ones I bought on eBay where the cheapest for it's kind. The brightness of the White LEDs are 20.000 mcd (100x for $7). Some of the colors you've linked are only 4000mcd. That's a big difference.
Of course when I colored them there was a slightly decrease of mcd, but still way over 4000.

Also you can not take the price of the markers into the total price of making a colored LED.
It's not like I color 10 LEDs and throw the markers away :)
I can probably color thousends of LEDs with a marker and still use it for tons of other stuff.
The ones I used are almost 10years old and still work great.

Anyway, just see this instructable as an easy way to make some colored LEDs when you don't have any around. :)

[frollard]

Precisely - This is an EXCELLENT example of what to do when you need to modify something, and I commend you for that!

As for brightness, the human eye after a certain threshold can't tell the difference in brightness - its a logarithmic sensitivity relationship...A lot of the numbers are perceived brightness - and a white led putting out 20 apparent wavelengths will appear brighter, naturally :D  I would go so far as to say that 4cd red would look at bright as 20cd white, because they are comparing apples and oranges.

[big-jamie]

When in doubt, use the science card ;) lol

great instructable, ive got a soldering iron, and nothing to solder, i might find soemthing cool to do with loads of coloured LEDs =)

[XOIIO]

Nice, but I still like the pure blue that bought LED's have.

[11richie21]

 ahh pretty kool! nice idea!

[Adum24]

Wow! This is pretty cool! I think I'll try this sometime.

[karmagirl]

 Wow, didn't know that a diffused LED would have such better lighting effects!  Makes sense though since the light isn't so focussed.