DIY LED Dartboard Ring Light

I needed a dartboard light to light up my dartboard and eliminate the shadows cast by the darts. I know spot or flood lights can work but you need at least 3 of them and have to mount them to the ceiling and wire them. I really liked the ring light idea. So I was looking to buy a 360 degree LED Dartboard ring light, and there are some commercially made LED dartboard lights on the market and they are priced at between $125 to $200 and shipping is another Big cost. I found some in England that were less expensive but with the exchange to pounds and shipping costing more than the light, That option did not work for me. Also most of the commercial lights and a lot of the DIY lights that I found all seemed to leave the LEDs exposed and shining out and glaring in your eyes when throwing at the line. also for anyone watching from the side the Leds made it almost impossible to watch the dartboard at any angle other than straight on from the throwing line without seeing the glaring bright LEDs signing in your eyes. I wanted to fix this problem. So I looked on line for DIY LED dartboard lights and found a lot of options. From Using Bicycle rims to car tires and various other Random plastic circular items to Pialla pot lid for the ring. None of these items seemed to be what I was looking for.

My neighbour owns a sheet metal shop so I asked him if he could bend me a 1&1/4 wide circular disk out of sheet metal with a double safety edge at 27.5" diameter to match my dartboard surround that I had on order. and make 3 stand off legs the same at 1&1/4 wide with double safety edges and 10" long with a 2" foot bent at 90 Degrees on the end. ( I would make the foot 2 1/2" or 3" Next time.) He made these parts for me and I had them in a few days. I got lucky and got these for free. I don't know how much these parts would cost to get made? He made a joint in the ring with a tab that slides into the safety edges, so I could adjust the diameter. I just used a few drops of Crazy clue to secure the ring to a 27.5" diameter.

I was thinking I could use a PVC drywall J end cap and heat it with my heat bun and bend it around the sheet metal ring and it would allow me to mount the LEDs inside it and keep them out of sight. I was wrong because the heat gun deformed the PVC and it became trash and went into the bin. As you can see by the pictures. I then thought if I got a plastic drywall corner bead I could cut one side every 1/4 inch or so and then bend that around the inside of my metal and glue the little tabs together with epoxy and maybe add some fiberglass to reinforce it. I thought that would work. I was wrong the tabs would not stay flat and were not going to give me a good finished product - Next failure. Into the garbage with that one too.

I was then trying to find a material to make the face of the ring to mount and hide the LEDs. I fou8nd a 4X4' sheet of 1/4 thick pegboard material without the holes in it at my local building supply lumberyard, I'm not sure what it is actually called it is some sort of fiber board I think it is commonly used to make indoor signs (masonite). it was $10.50 for the sheet. I used a router and a circle cutting Jig to cut the circles out of this 1/4 sheet of material I made the outside diameter 28" to have a 1/2 inch lip outside the metal ring. I then cut a shallow groove at 27.5' diameter. to center and glue in the 27.5' sheet metal ring. and cut the inside diameter 1.25" inside the 27.5' groove so at 26.25' to give me the finished faceplate ring at 1&3/4 wide. with a groove in the back to mount the metal ring. I sanded the edges and both sides of the ring to knock off the corners and prep for painting. It all worked out great I used Gorilla Glue to fasten the metal ring to the back of the face plate, in the groove that I cut to center it and keep it even and round. Once the glue set up I used more gorilla glue and positioned the legs with the feet facing inward. at the bottom and at about with the 20 being 90 degrees I put the 2 trop legs at 45 degrees angle on either side between the 12 and 9 on the left side of the dartboard and between the 18 and 4 on the right side of the dartboard. (I was not sure how to explain that I hope it made sense to you all.) I was able to get the end of the leg into the groove that was cut to mount the ring and put a dab of Gorilla glue behind each leg and clamped them in place until the glue dried. I then put 3 pop rivets into each leg from the inside of the ring and in the bottom half of the metal ring so they will not be in the way of Mounting the LEDs.

I then used a white primer and painted the entire project inside and out to seal the galvanized metal and fiber board. I then painted the legs and outside of the project with flat black paint. I was going to mask off the inside but I just tried to be careful not to paint the inside as much as possible to keep the inside white to reflect more light.

I ordered a 16' strip of Cool White 3528 LEDs from Ebay for $16.99 and mounted them around the metal ring as close to the front along the edge of the face plate. and when I got to where I started I carefully twisted the strip to mount to the face plate as close to the metal ring as possible. Giving it 2 full wraps of LEDS with these leds I believe that adds up to Close to 600 LEDs. I had just over a foot of the light strip left over. I found that the Light strip was not sticking to the front face because of the stress on the strip to bend sideways to get around the ring they were lifting off there they bent up a little. I pressed them down and they would lift up again. so I applied some hot glue and pressed them back down and they did not move again. I also secured both ends of the light strip with hot Glue. I also secured and anchored the wires to the metal ring and bottom leg with the hot glue. I have to note for everyone to be careful when bending the LED strip as where I made the transition from the first lap of LEDs to the 2nd lap and had to twist the Strip. after a day it stopped lighting the 2nd half of the LEDS. if I moved the strip at the twist they would light up again but there was a bad wire in the strip where I bent it. So I wiggled the light strip until it lit up held it in that position, and put hot glue under it so it could no longer move and this solved the problem.

I used the feet on the bottom of the legs to mount the light to my surround by hooking the feet over the dartboard surround and letting the feet go behind the surround. It was at this point that I found out that my surround was only 27' in diameter not 27.5" like the description on the website that I ordered it from said it was going to be so my light did not line up exactly with the surround. I used the edge from some foam floor tiles the ones that go together like a jigsaw puzzle. and cut the puzzle shaped edges into 1 1/4 inch pieced and glued 3 of them together and put them under all 3 legs this perfectly centered the light ring to the bartboard & surround. and still left about 1/2 of the feet to hook onto the surround. so if you do this project make sure that you have your surround before masking it in case they lie in the description like they did to me. it all worked out well and the light works a charm to light up my dartboard. there was no view of the LEDs from the throwing line at all but they still could be seen if looking from the side. So I applied a I think it was 3/8" by 9/16" strip of foam weather stripping around the inside edge of the face ring to hide the leds from sight. so they are now totally invisible from any angle you look at it from. I also added a dimmer switch so I can adjust how bright I want the light to be and also provides a convenient way to turn the light off and on. So that is it my first instructable done I hope you liked it and i did OK writing it. It might be a bit long winded, but I wanted to tell you my journey on how I built this project. I think it cost me about $60 to $70 Canadian to build. so about 1/2 of what a store bought dartboard light would cost but I think it is way better than anything on the market and I built it myself. With the help of my sheetmetal friend. Cheers and Good Darts to you all.