I'm going to have a go at making my own lightbar, what could possibly go wrong?...

[BramageDained]

The boxes are all going to actually end up tied together and mounted with brackets like how all the other behind the grill mounts work.

Really, if the real light bar makers would have come out with curved ones that are a single stack of 10w LEDs a year ago I would have just bought one of those, modified the brackets to mount it behind the gaps I'm filling and been done with it.

 

[The Car Stereo Company]

i persued this type of project a while ago but never got too far. i hope you come out with something good.

 

[BramageDained]

My load resistor showed today so I made some progress.

I wired both 30A upfitter switches to the passthroughs

That ridiculous looking test stand I mentioned before?

It's this:

Set to 2.94A for now. Thinking about it, I'm probably going to set it to 2.8 or so before I test lights. I had something else going on and had to stop.

I'm going on a car cruise and partying tomorrow so anything more will have to wait till Monday as I'm expecting to be mostly useless Sunday.

I still need to make a jig for making the strings of LEDs. I orderd a chunk of heatsink that should be here next week, I might just get a hunk of aluminum in the interim so I can put the lights on it temporarily and play with the different reflectors.

Since there's a 7th gap in the center below the letters I might just make 1 complete light box with 4LEDs and mount it there for awhile as a longer test.

 

[BramageDained]

Heatsink order had to be changed, so I didn't get them until yesterday.

They were ~$5 each which is dirt cheap, imo.

I should have everything layed out and working tomorrow for the first small box. There's plenty of meat on the base of the heatsinks that I'm just going to make the sides screw together instead of welding on these two.

I figured if I end up having to change things, it'll be easier to do it if things can be unscrewed.

I didn't post about it, but, the other day I did make a string of 4 of the LEDs and bumped them with power from the driver(which is set to 2.85A now). I was a bit surprised how bright they actually are when driven at near full power.

I still need to pick up a drill/tap for the screw holes as I don't have anything that small.

 

[Captain Awesome]

 

[BramageDained]

Well, I didn't get it up and running today. Had some stuff around the house to do and I'm too tired to do the delicate bit of soldering. Well, that and I forgot to pick up a 6-32 Tap/drill bit.

I got things laid out and started drilling:

I couldn't think up a good way to lay out exactly where to put the holes so there was some eyeballing involved.

The first pic is sort of a lie, that is the 2nd heat sink. I had issues with the first one. First I broke off the 4-40 tap in one of the holes. Then I tried to force a screw in a hole that was bottomed out and broke that, too.

You can see that here:

I took a dremel to the tap and screw and got the slightly below the level of the surface. This is now going to be the one for the drivers. It's not an issue since I only need two small spots that are flat to mount them and the whole thing need not be flat.

Anyway, here is how it sits now. I'm short the one screw I broke in the first attempt. I measured the distances of where the screw holes ended up and came up with an average that I will use to lay things out to be more precise when I end up making more of the boxes. As it sits the lights are about 1/32" off of being evenly spaced. It just looks weird from the angle of the picture.

The idea was to get the solder pads lined up in a straight line to make life easier for that part.

I quick trimmed one of the reflectors so it will clear the pad and the screws:

Just kind of sitting in place:

I don't think it will have any impact on the beam pattern.

Tomorrow I'll pickup the tap/bit/screws I need and should then have everything to get to the point of testing the reflectors. I have 10, 12 and 28.5 degree ones. I'm also probably going to use 1/8" x 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" aluminum angle with one of the legs cut down to 3/8" or so to make the sides of the box which I can pickup from Menard's where I'm getting the other parts from too.

I didn't take any pictures of them, but, for tying the lights together, I picked up some "battery bars" that are/were used for making R/C NiCd battery packs. I'll just file them to size/shape to work.

The heat sink surface is smooth enough to kind of get a reflection and is flat as best I can tell with a straight edge. It may still get lapped flat/polished like I do my computer heatsinks for better heat transfer.

 

[sabumaru]

Sweet project
Can't wait to see the end result

 

[BramageDained]

Here's one of the battery bars filed down to size:

All of them in place and soldered:

The solder on the middle of the bars was just so the iron would transfer heat better to the bar. Everything checks out with a meter. The pads are all connected and nothing shorts to the heat sink. I had some adjustment in their mounting, they are all now evenly spaced within .002"

Driver mounted:

All the holes are filled with RTV silicone. They're from my first attempt at getting the lights right.

I decided against using the thermal epoxy for this stage of things. Everything is just screwed down and I used some OCZ Freeze thermal paste that I had laying around. I also decided to ditch the stainless screws for steel.

I should have things mostly complete tomorrow. I still need to get poly sheet for the front cover and figure out what the mount down to the frame needs to look like but both of those tasks are minor. I'm having the 4' section of aluminum angle trimmed tomorrow so I should be able to finish the sides of the boxes, too.

I'm not yet set on either grommets or these plastic strain reliefs that I found at the hardware store for passing the wires through the box. either will just get a dose of RTV for sealing.

I'm excited. I should be able to go somewhere to try out the different reflectors tomorrow night.

 

[Steele16]

Those Novak battery bars are familiar... I've made a few thousand laps around small dirt tracks in my day!

 

[BramageDained]

Well, it's a couple of days late, but.


The hold up was actually just getting my piece of angle back after having one of the legs sheared short.

Ground end:

Positive end:

Running off of a small battery. Keep in mind, this battery only has 12V left in it. Minimum input for full power is 13.8V. Full power will be a good bit brighter than this. No optics of any kind either.

I might get to play with the different optics I have tonight, but, I have a birthday party to go to then the weekend is going to be spent getting out hunting property in shape for deer season.