LED Diffuser

[BlackWidow]

To day I was trying to to use one of the annunciator panels that i purchsed from the yard. There are 2 28V bulbs in the back of a single annunciator so i took those out and replaced them with some LED's the only problem was that the glass that covered the annunciator was too dark. It had some type of paint on them and the words on them were cleaned of paint. So i decided to scratch the paint off that worked but there was no diffusion and the only color they come in is green so looking into the anniunciator i could easily see the two LEDS but it did not look very realistic. so I pondered for awhile and tried plain white paper with GEAR printed on it. Well Im sure others have tried that and have been extremely disapointed. So while sitting there trying to think of what i could do I saw them all stacked up nice and orderly. JEWEL CD CASES. quickly i put one of them up to the lit annunciator and it was not that great then I took the CD out and placed the part that the CD had covered and WHAM it was perfect. I tried a Lego peice and found that the difusser needs to be about 1" or so away form the LEDS. Anyway I used a knife designed to cut accrylic to cut out a pattern for the annunciator holder and it works great with a piece of accrylic over the diffuser. I plan on getting some printing (some how) inbetween those two peices.

[Bob Reed]

Do you have any pictures of what you are trying to do? Sounds interasting...

[BlackWidow]

Bob,

My wife took the camera tonight her and some friends went to a comedy club so I will snap a few shots tommorow so that it is better understood.

[PeterH]

Hi,
how about taking a laser printed overhead slide for the printing ? That´s the cheapest solution I could think of and very flexible.

Best rgds

Peter

[BlackWidow]

Thats a great idea thanks.

[BlackWidow]

Here is a picture of what I have done

Scroll down to the last image. http://www.mgwelding.homeip.net/

[Olympic260]

Oh boy...

This yard is the flight sim builder paradise!!!!!!

[Michael Carter]

Korry indicators use a piece of frosted plastic. You might try that, or a very thin sliver of opaque sheet styrene.

I'm not sure how well that will work with LED's, but it does work well with incandescent bulbs.

Since much of the light output from an LED is usually in a narrow angle and concentrated at the front of the LED, the opaque styrene may be too thick, or you may see only two colored spots, and the frosted acrylic may not diffuse the light enough to spread it around.

[Bob Reed]

I think the idea of "frosted" acrylic is the rout to take with leds. As stated they have a very direct view angle and the frosted lens will help spread the light out more even. I use this method.

[Matt Olieman]

Regarding Frosted acrylic or what ever material, and diffusing light from a LED. I had similar problems, I ended up filing the end of the LED (Flattening) and using fine sand paper to frost it. Diffuses the light fairly well. Same thing with frosted acrylic, use a fine sand paper on the material, and WHAM you got frosted acrylic.

Just my two cents worth :)

[BlackWidow]

Great I will definitly give it a try I did notice the farther away i placed the CD cut cout out the greater the diffusion.

[Bob Reed]

That is true. Distance plays a part in it too! Because the further away from the leds the lens gets, the more undefined the hot spots!