DIY Ringlight
Hello everyone,
As you guys already know I have made a ringlight
https://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-LED-Ring-Ligh...
This the second version much professional looking one
this the second version of the ring light
which is much user friendly and much brighter
however its little tougher to build but not impossible.If I can make it anyone can
Part List
1) 6 MM aluminum sheet
2) 3 Meters thick copper Wire
3 Toggle Switch
4) 1x Xt60 Male & female connectors cheaper option 4X Dean connectors
5) DC-DC boost converter Constant Current Mobile Power supply 10A 250W LED Driver
6) LED dimmer
7) Surface mount flushed out led panel LED Aluminium body OUTER DIAMETER 22 CM
8) 4MM led
9) 25x 5 watt SMD led
10) acrylic
11)spebb
12) solder
13 thermal compound,
14) gang box(used for cctv camera)
15)1x 2 pin terminal block
Cutting the Aluminium
First thing you need to do is cut 6MM sheet which work as a base for the leds.
8 inches outer diameter(you can also use bigger diameter as per your requirement however then you will need more leds ). I used 8 inch outer diameter because that the max my lathe machine could take & 4 inches inner diameter.
Place the Leds
Once the aluminium is cut just place the leds in circle just to get the idea of how many leds you will need
in my case it came up to 21 led which was a odd number and I had a lot of trouble with it Which you will see in the later part of the video.
Marking the Leds
Once Place the leds I made marking on the holes of th SMD led so that I could drill a hole on the plate
used a permanent marker .
had to make total 42 holes
and tap drilled all the holes so the screws can go in easily
Placing the Plate in a Case
I didn't want the whole led to look naked so wanted something to cover it up from the outside
so for that i used a Surface mount flushed out led panel LED Aluminium body OUTER DIAMETER 22 CM
I wish I had got something from scrap but had purchase a led and remove the outer frame.never the less it was worth it.I used the flushed out led panel body,this will work like a body for my ring light.
placed the Plate on the body and took the markings to drill holes on the aluminium plate in order to keep the plate and body together.
Placing the Led
Now once the markings are done it was time to place the leds.
I generously applied thermal compound on the led and placed all the leds one by one
and then tightened all the LED using screws
***************************************************************************
ITS RECOMENDED TO TEST ALL THE LEDS BEFORE PLACING
***************************************************************************
Solder the Wires
Once the leds are place it was time to solder the leds
this was a the difficult part as I had to calculate the voltage Im going use
My first idea was to use pair of 2 Leds with 10 parallel in each
that didn't work as it had 21 led so what I did is Made a series of 3 led group with 7 in each
please check the Diagram for reference as it will give you a brief idea of how I did it
As you are going to use approximately 32 Volts so used Mains wire stripped the wire off and then started soldering
and after each joint soldered i used heat shrink tubing to cover the naked wire to avoid any contacts
Once I soldered everything I used a continuity test to check for any short circuits ( ITS RECOMMENDED.).
Once thats done I too a long wire connected a Positive and GND of the LEDs which go in to the power supply
Test the Ringlight
Once the LED are soldered I connect the Rig to output of the boost converter and the input of the boost converter
to laptop power supply of 20 volts
Before go live make sure the boost converter voltage is set to zero
then start turning it till you reach the optimum brightness
and also check the voltage & amps you are feeding the LEDS you don't want the leds to overheat and burn out
Once thats done just go ahead and check the brightness.
i used a 35V 8A boost converter
In my case the optimum voltage was 31 volts with 1.3 Amps power supply
it was perfect.
Power Supply
Now there are two options to it
OPTION 1
I used a 20 volts 3amps laptop powersupply and boosted the voltage using a boost converter.
OPTION 2
2nd option is a Portable power supply so that you can use it outdoors aswell
I built a rechargeable power supply for using it outdoors
I will show you the making of it in next project
Fabrication Part
Now I knew it works so the rest of it was the fabrication part.
I still had to make inner walls for the inner diameter of the ringlight
For this I cut Acrylic in circle with inner diameter of 4 inches and outer diameter of 5inches
the alternatives are t use a wood get an acrylic of exactly 6CM thickness which will be really not worth it
so took a 5MM thick acrylic and cut a few circles and stacked it one above the other(Height of 1 Inch) to make the inner wall
please the images for reference.
Camera Rig Fabrication
Now I had to make a rig which will hold my camera and the ring light
With My luck I had few pieces of aluminum plates from my previous epic Fail projects
Please see the diagram for reference if you want to build the same or I can recommend you to go for Pre built rig
Or take an aluminium strips
38 cm long ,5.3cm width, 3mm thick
22cm long,
5.3cm width, 3mm thick
once its cut i gave it for powder coating
Custom Rig for Connecting Tripod Head to Another Tripod
For more flexibitly in using the ring light while connecting to a tripod
i made a connector bolt to connect the fluid mount tripod head to my tripod
which gave me a great amount of flexibility.
Enclosure of the Circuits
Everything is done except for putting the circuit in a secure place
so I took a gang box and made a cut in the centre to fix a heat sink for the boost converter,.
I used 2 pin L terminal block for the power input & Xt60 connector at the power output please see the images for reference
Final Step
Once everything was done I I tested it and
Some mistakes which could be avoided in my case I realized I could have put more leds to make it extreme
if you like the project please follow my profile on instructables,instagram & youtube