Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Building the Cube

Just like mentioned in the previous post, the construction of the LED cube has commenced. In 2.5 hours, we were able to solder the multi-colored LEDs in an 8 x 8 grid.


By using our bending jigs, we are able to bend the leads on the LED diodes to separate the 3 color channels from the GND (ground). The easiest way we figured for soldering the LED was with the use of a grid that we also printed in 3D as shown on the picture below.

The grid is designed to fit our LEDs with 5/8 in. distance between them. Because the size of our LED panel will be huge, we only fit up to 8 LEDs in our grid mold to easily solder small lines or squares. Once we have enough to build a 4 x 4 grid, we test them to reassure our solder was correct and no leads touch each other. Once tested we built the 8 x 8 grid and tested it again. Thankfully, we had no problems with our first grid. Several students in the Robotics Department have agreed to assist us, but to ensure nice looking, well soldered panels, Ryan and I train the students so each panel will be identical to each other.



We are still soldering the LEDs and will be posting up more pics on its build.

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