30 UV led circuit
30 UV led circuit
Hello! I bought 30 simple UV leds (those with a big and a small leg, not a single strip). I'm trying to build a UV station to dry my resin but idk how to proceed. I tryed watching some videos but there is a lot of math to build that and I can't do it. I have 30 led lights, 5 resistors of 100 and 5 of 300. I wanted to use AA batteries. Do I need 8 of them?? Its not going to be turned on for long, just some 30 seconds at a time.
Can someone help me?
You could connect the LEDs in 5 strings of 6 parallel LEDs, each string with it's own 100 ohm resistor. You will need a significant amount of voltage for that, at lest 7x the threshold voltage of the LEDs
AA batteries can supply plenty current, the question is for how long.
You need about 1.3 Watt for 30 LEDs (I'm assuming 15 mA, 3V). A rechargable AA battery has about 2.4 Wh according to Wikipedia, so 6 AA batteries will last you 2.4Wh * 6 / 1.3W = 11 hours.
I have no idea how curing works, but 1.3 Watt feels very low. That amount of power is fine for visual lighting, or for signals (turn on a TV), but energy wise it's very little.
Do you have a datasheet/part number for the LEDs, or at least a picture and diameter?
Because battery voltage reduces over time, the LEDs will get dimmer as the battery drains fairly quickly. If possible, running it off a mains plugpack (e.g.12V like for a router or external hard drive) would be good.
An example UV LED has a forward voltage of nominally 3.7V. Two in series on a 12 (8x1.5V) supply gives us 12V-(2x3.7V) =4.6V to drop across the resistor. We want ~15mA, so need a very roughly (V/I =R) 4.6V/0.015A=300 ohm resistor.
When the battery is nearly discharged, at 1.1V/cell it will be 8.8V, giving 1.4V across the resistor and V/R=I 1.4V/300ohm= 4.7mA.
So you would connect each pair of LEDs as:
BAT+ RES +LED- +LED- -BAT all in series. Like this.
You'll need another 10 300 ohm resistors for 15 total, one per pair of LEDs.
