Comments on: Make your own LEDs

By: bumblebee

bumblebee — Sat, 09 May 2009 19:51:36 +0000

@hackius…thanks…I guess that means I actually didn’t sleep through the lecture back in 1984 when I was getting my 2-year degree.

For those who think that this has no practical application…well not today, but it’s always a good thing to know the HOW and WHY of techie things because that’s what stimulates ideas on new developments. We’ve become far too dependent on “black-box” thinking. I’ve actually constructed a functioning vacuum tube out of a canning jar based on some plans I found through Lindsay Publications. Not for any practical reason, but because it was a challenge that our grandfathers took on. You simply never know when being able to “MacGuiver” something from absolute scratch might come in handy.

By: Christa

Christa — Sat, 09 May 2009 19:44:00 +0000

They did this on MAKE a few months ago too. Check it out, it looks like it works fairly well.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/make_presents_the_led_a_m.html

By: andre

andre — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:03:08 +0000

might also work with low melt alloy as the “clamp”… also its possible to spray paint or electroplate the SiC with ITO, allowing more of the crystal to glow.

-A

By: mike

mike — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:44:13 +0000

This is pretty cool, its the kind of thing you would never expect to happen outside of a clean room where they are manufactured.

By: hubert

hubert — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:50:56 +0000

Nice Idea…
i have always tried this before and never had so good looking effects. But i took the sic from the socket of an old lightbulb like described on this http://www.b-kainka.de/bastel69.htm german website.

By: Hackius

Hackius — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:35:07 +0000

@bumblebee: that’s about right. You didn’t make me cringe. There are very specific rules for photons to be liberated (most of the times they don’t) but other than that your explanation is great.

By: stithyoshi

stithyoshi — Fri, 08 May 2009 05:06:09 +0000

Ha, I find this awesome just because I love to do things the old hard way. Right now I’m working on building a minicomputer using RTL, and I have to say that, for whatever reason, I find that building things the way they were built when the technology was only first emerging is quite a thrill when you get it to work. I’m very interested to see how your soviet epoxy LEDs turn out!

By: vikki

vikki — Fri, 08 May 2009 02:44:05 +0000

to josh
even the twittering toilet has a more practical app than this, you could install them in public restrooms and see how often a particular toilet is used, if your the one responsible for cleaning them, this information becomes useful, a toilet that doesn’t get used, doesn’t need cleaned.

you want to learn about how led’s work, try http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/led.htm or http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/questions/question/1135/ otherwise show me how to make a 5 watt led.

By: nubie

nubie — Fri, 08 May 2009 01:26:58 +0000

cool.

By: ehrichweiss

ehrichweiss — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:52:55 +0000

nice…not practical…but nice

By: jay

jay — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:34:41 +0000

Michael, how big is a ‘sowing’ needle? I assume it is at least 1/2″ wide, otherwise how would you plant the seeds? (Joking of course. It’s spelled sewing)

I really like the idea here though.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:29:49 +0000

Wow, thanks to feature my site! No there is no real application. But I am currently trying to use the silicon carbide from sand paper and some epoxy glue to make tiny replicas of the leds from soviet russia. To me the project was just about doing something that I thought was impossible at home in a few very easy steps :-)

By: josh

josh — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:11:21 +0000

@vicki…not everything here has to have a practical application. and not too many on this site lately are practical (ie, twittering gas emissions and toilet flushes). this article goes into the basics of how LED’s work, which is helpful for many who are just starting to learn how things work, and how it used to be done.

By: vikki

vikki — Thu, 07 May 2009 23:41:21 +0000

fun to watch, but i fail to see any practical application. meh.

By: xrazorwirex

xrazorwirex — Thu, 07 May 2009 23:00:19 +0000

I’m only trained as a servicer and that’s pretty much the basic overview I got on p/n junctions – ee’s delve into crazy shit that almost nobody else would want to know.