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Focusing LED light through fiber optics...
HaRuMaN:
Yeah, I bought from Luigi, his are not sountersunk on the end (I wish they were).
I'll try bending the wires to form a square.
I wrecked one LED already (at least they are pretty cheap). I ground down the top of the LED to make it smaller, but I went too far, and ended up somehow killing the red and green circuits.
I do have some super thin wire (stuff used in HO railroads to make telephone poles) and some shrink tubing. If I get it to work right, I'll post pictures.
HaRuMaN:
I did try fiber optics as well and was not impressed. My problem is getting all the light from the LED into the cable. A lot of the light is lost radially... If I had a way to get most of the light running through the fiber it might work well.
(I used a TOSLINK cable and chopped it in half for this test).
Franco B:
Yeah I think you need to block out as much light as possible around the LED so it all gets directed down the fibres. I think heatshrink and/or liquid electrical tape would do a good job.
I have been looking into it a little and you from what I gather you need to cut the cable with a hot blade and then polish the fibre ends to enable the best light transmission. It advises polishing it to 12 microns before polishing it down to one. The highest grit I have at home is 1200 which IIRC is 9 microns. I'm going to try polishing both ends with that and then maybe getting some higher grit if that's not satisfactory.
HaRuMaN:
Hmm. I may try that. I have some heatshrink I can use. I'll also try the hot knife & polish method. I'd really like it to work out that way, it make things a lot simpler than mounting the LED in bubbletop.
Franco B:
Yeah it would make it much easier :)
What diameter is your TOSEC cable? Do you know what diameter the hole is too? I'm guessing that Luigi would have had them drilled 3mm. Mine are 3.5mm and the outer sheath of the cable is 3mm so I'm hoping there should be enough clearance for it to spin freely, even if the cable is bent 90 degrees. Are you going to insert the cable right up into the ball top? I think that would provide the best lighting.
Let me know how you get on. I ordered my cable last week but It hasn't turned up yet. The seller is going to post some more if it doesn't turn up, fookin Royail Mail :angry:
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