Another Iron Man Arc Reactor Thread

[AmandaGbur]

Hey everyone! So i've been around the forums for quite sometime but never got around registering until now. Basically it's because i need some help. I really would love to make an Iron Man Arc Reactor. I've checked out quite a few from the website "Instrucables" but the LED lighting is really confusing me. I have no idea how LED lighting and resisters and volts and all that work, does anyone on here have any good explanations? Or another way to make a bright and efficient arc reactor? Here are some examples of the kind I was looking at:

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-an-Iron-Man-Arc-Reactor/

http://www.instructables.com/id/Iron-Man-MkV-Arc-Reactor/

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-an-Iron-Man-Arc-Reactor/

I apologize if i'm asking this in the wrong place (mods can feel free to move it) Or if i'm not really supposed to be asking this type of thing here. Either way, I appreciate the help to a newbie! Thanks in advance!

 

[monkeywrench]

Here is one lighting option: http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=87021

 

[AmandaGbur]

See that looks nice and simple but even from just looking at the picture and reading through the comments, i still have no idea. Haha when I saw I no nothing about LED's and how they work, i literally mean nothing. I just know that they light up bright! When i look at a picture like that all i see is a bunch of lines on a circle. It's so frustrating because i'm normally really good at this type of stuff but i just cant get the concept of this down.l

 

[AmandaGbur]

Can anyone help?

 

[sirnaut]

It would nice to have a better detailed tutorial for an arc reactor

 

[ave4uevoli]

so you need help googling "led calculator?"

here's a tutorial... http://www.theledlight.com/ledcircuits.html

after you figured out what type of led's you want to use - either the small ones that hyperdyne uses or the bigger ones - you get the specs, figure out how much voltage they need and the voltage drop on each and there are automatic calculators that tell you how many resistors you need, what type of resistor..etc.

I assume you're going to use a 12 volt power supply - but you can use a 9 volt power supply (battery).. just put that in your calculations - 9 volt battery won't last very long though.

LED's are cheap - so are those battery holders from radio shack - you could always just play around first by hooking up all the positive connections to the positive side of the battery and then all the negative connections to the negative side of the power source...

Once you get the basics of either a parallel circuit or a series circuit, adding more led's is pretty easy.

 

[Honus]

I use the tiny NTE 30027 LEDs on mine. Each one has a 100 Ohm resistor soldered to it and they are connected in parallel to a 3.7v LiPo battery.

You can buy the LEDs here:
http://www.cablesandconnectors.com/30000-30.HTM

For a neat LED calculator you can print out look here:
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/ledcalc

 

[AmandaGbur]

Thanks for all your help everyone! I know how sick of these "newbie" questions you all must be and how often you must get them. All your links did help me understand LED's a little more than i used too. I know understand the positive and negative hook up's and such. Now i just need to figure out soldering and i should be good! Don't worry though, i can google that one on my own I am considering just using stringed LED lights to make it easier on myself though and finding some way to incorporate them into a design. Anyone have any opinions or suggestions on that?

 

[ave4uevoli]

Thanks for all your help everyone! I know how sick of these "newbie" questions you all must be and how often you must get them. All your links did help me understand LED's a little more than i used too. I know understand the positive and negative hook up's and such. Now i just need to figure out soldering and i should be good! Don't worry though, i can google that one on my own I am considering just using stringed LED lights to make it easier on myself though and finding some way to incorporate them into a design. Anyone have any opinions or suggestions on that?

Yes - stringing the LED's together, rather than soldering them onto a board (for a first timer) would be much much easier.

Keep in mind the concept is the same when you're soldering them onto a board though (if you look at the picture of hyperdyne's board above, and you trace out all those silver connection, you'll realize that it's just positive/negative)

Either way, go to radio shack, buy a ream of wire, a cheap soldering gun, and solder.. and you'll be fine. Use the wire to attach the led's together (strip the ends and then just twist them onto the led attachments... and "string them up" You can even test the led's at this time to make sure you got it right.

The attachments to all of the leds can then be soldered together. It's a lot easier to solder connections that are already twisted together. All you have to do is heat up the solder with the soldering gun and plop it on there.

It's a lot harder to solder a connection that isn't holding together by itself because then you need another armature, or a third arm to hold the wire to the connection.

After you have a string of LED's you can just bend it to any shape you want and fit it behind any arc reactor you have.

 

[AmandaGbur]

Ok i think i definitely understand the wiring and soldering part of an LED now, that was a lot of help. I think i can make an iron man arc reactor more easier than i could before. One thing i seem to be noticing though is that instead of using regular LED's people seem to be using Surface mounted LED's instead (for arc reactors). I've tried finding tutorials of how to wire and solder that kind but can't seem to find much. Do you know anything about those?

 

[Honus]

Here you go-

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorial_info.php?tutorials_id=36

And for pre soldered LEDs with resistors just use these guys-
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8735

 

[AmandaGbur]

Awesome thanks!