Wednesday 2 June 2010

Few and Far Between!

The blogs posted on here have become fewer and further between. What there has been of them has been fairly short and mainly talks about the actual blog rather than what we have been doing. Much like this one!

Well we have been working very hard, both for the business and in personal lives. A bathroom has been fitted and a kitchen is WIP. Scarlett is growing by the day, as I believe is customary for babies.

Previously the focus of the business has been to grow by expanding our product range and recently we've taken on Big Clive's excellent PCBs (Floodlight and Spotlight) There are a few other new bits and bobs on the site which are hopefully of interest, such as transistors, diodes and RGB colour changing LEDs.
On the whole I feel the site needs a good facelift, and it's on the to do list. Ebay listings need an overhaul too and VAT needs adding to all products.

We've decided though that rather than bringing in more and more products we'd like to sell the ones we already stock, but better and we're working on some tutorials and guides of what you can do with the LEDs, which should hopefully provide a little inspiration. We've made a place to put these all too, our forums. Please come along and say hi.

As a starter one of our customers has provided a guide for building a lit shelf for your PC using our SMD LED TAPE

Reproduced with Permission

So here's a basic guide to making one.

Step 1

12mm right angle cross section.



You can get lengths of the stuff from most DIY stores in aluminium or plastic. As this was not for strength, put simply to raise the floor, plastic was sufficient ( and far cheaper as i had to buy 2.8m of the stuff )

Simply cut to size with a Stanley knife, and in my case, spray the outside edge with black paint.

Step 2

Fix some of my favourite SMD led tape, available from [url=http://www.phenoptix.com/shop/smd-led-tape-c-25_40.html]here[/url], to the inside face.


Dead easy as it is self adhesive.

If you position the top of the tape 3mm from the top of the plastic cross section, then the 3mm acrylic floor will sit on it flush.

Step 3

After experimenting with different options, i found that a simple piece of white printer paper acts as a great diffuser for the light to even the spread out under the acrylic floor.


Step 4

Secure your cross section to the case, and the acrylic will rest on the SMD tape.





Step 5

Sit back and admire your work