I contemplated making my own PCB boards for the LEDs, but after doing some searching I found some boards online that would be more cost effective and work better than making my own boards. I decided to buy the following board from futurlec.com It’s possible to get 4 individual strips from each board for making individual LED PCBs. I needed a total of 10 strips for the two sides of my acrylic so I purchased 3 boards for $9.50. The strips are good because they will allow for 4-8 LEDs per strip. I chose to do 5 LEDs with a 1ohm resistor per strip (@ 7.5v), making a total of 25 LEDs per side of my acrylic.
The LEDs I’m using are the popular OSRAM SFH485 bought from digikey.com, but you can find them from many places.
Parts to cut out from PCB board using a utility knife or guillotine
PCB boards cut from the main board
Another view of the individual PCBs
The LEDs soldered to the board. The green wire connects each (-) to the (+) of the next LED.
Another view, this time with the leads cut off the LEDs. LEDs are about 1 1/4″ apart
After wiring all the individual PCB boards. I started connecting all the positives from one board to the positives to the next. I did the same thing with all the negatives. The picture below looks more complicated then it really is.
The LEDs on the side of the acrylic.
All the LEDs wired up and set aside the acrylic
Although it doesn’t look very “clean,” all the wires will be hidden within the top frame. The LEDs will be attached to the bottom part of the top frame and the top and bottom parts of the top frame will screw into each other leaving the LEDs hidden inside.
