LED Spots 2

Assemble the parts:

	Piece of 1" thin wall PVC (approximately 3" to 5" long)
	Plastic coke bottle top
	LED's, resistors and a 9 volt battery clip

Tools I use are a soldering iron, hot glue gun, small flathead screwdriver, diagonal cutters and a battery powered drill with a small drill bit (1/16"). I also have PVC cutters, which are real handy if you use a lot PVC in your projects like I do.

Mount the LED's to the Cap:

Cut a slit in the side of the cap. This will make it much easier to slide into the PVC later. (figure 1)

Make a template for the LED's by first drawing a circle onto the paper by tracing the cap (figure 2.), then drawing a second circle about 1/8" inch inside the first circle. You will want to lay out the LED's to match (figure 3), including the vertical orientation of the leads. Carefully press the LED leads through the paper so they are all within the inner circle, and the base of the LED's are all flush against the paper following the pattern in (figure 3).The result should look like (figure 4). If the LED's are to close, or they butt against the sides of the lid they will not sit flat and you will not have a nice tight beam. It may take several tries, but once you get the template right you can quickly mark as many caps as you care to.

Use the template to mark the holes on the top of the lid, then drill the holes using the 1/16" drill bit (figure 5).

Mark the top of the cap with a '-' sign as shown in (figure 6). This will help when you start hooking everything up.

Look at you LED's, you should see two things, one that the rim has a flat section, and two that the lead that is next to the flat section is shorter (figure 7).

Push the LED leads through the holes so the LEDs sit flat on the INSIDE of the caps. MAKE SURE THAT THE SHORT LEAD IS IN THE HOLE ON THE SAME SIDE AS THE '-' ON THE CAP. You can mount the LEDs so they are on the outside of the cap, but it is much simpler to deal with the wires and the soldering with the LED's on the inside. The result is shown in (figure 8).

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

Figure 7.

Figure 8.

Connect everything up:

	For these steps place the bottle cap open end down so the negative sign is on top and all the wires are sticking up.
	Twist together the wires as shown in Figure 9, 10 and 11 as follows. Bend the wires toward each other so they cross close to the bottle cap, while pushing the LED's up tight against the cap (figure 9). Twist the wires 2-3 times (figure 10). Use the diagonal cutters to clip off the excess (figure 11). This last step created the connection shown in (figure 12).
	Repeat the previous step for the wires as shown in (figure 13). This creates the connection shown in (figure 14).
	Repeat the previous step for the three wires on the side opposite the negative sign and the red wire from the battery clip as shown in (figure 15). Notice I put some extra twists in this connection because it included 4 wires. You may want to trim some extra insulation from the battery clip wire so you have about 1/4" of bare wire showing (figure 16). This creates the connection shown in (figure 17).
	Twist a 270 ohm resistor (red violet brown) to the negative side of the center LED, in other words on the side you marked the negative sign. If you checked the LED calculator to help with resistor codes it will have the color codes on the print out (figure 2). Use either lead on the resistor, it does not matter, and try to twist close to the resistor itself as shown in (figure 18). This will make the connection shown in (figure 19)
	At this stage you should only have 2 LED leads that don't have anything. Twist a 100 ohm (brown black brown) on one of the leads, then twist another 100 ohm resistor on the other lead as shown in figure (20). This made the connections shown in (figure 21).
	At this point you should have 3 resistors , each with a lead that is not connected to anything. Twist these 3 leads together with the black battery clip wire. Again, strip enough insulation away so you have about 1/4" bare wire, and give it a couple of extra twists because there are 4 wires. The result is (figure 22), making the connection shown in (figure 23).
	Guess what, you're done connecting wire! Plug in a battery and check operation. Hopefully you will see something like (figure 24). In my case I made a UV spot, so I demonstrated on a couple of bottles of UV paint.
	At this stage you have a functioning LED spotlight!

Figure 9.

Figure 10.

Figure 11.

Figure 12.

Figure 13.

Figure 14.

Figure 15.

Figure 16.

Figure 17.

Figure 18.

Figure 19.

Figure 20.

Figure 21.

Figure 22.

Figure 23.

Figure 24.

Trouble Shooting if it doesn't light:

	This section is sure to grow!
	Check your battery
	Check to see if any of your connections came undone, or if you have wires from 2 different connections touching.
	If none of the LEDs come on, try reversing the red and black wire.
	If only some of the LEDs come on and they are all in the same branch or branches, then check the connections in the branch that doesn't light, and try an led you know works in place of one that is not lighting

Finishing touches:

	Solder your connections. In the future I will try to provide a link to how to do this.
	Turn on your spot and aim it at a wall. Try to get all the LEDs pointing in the same direction so you get a nice tight beam. When finished hot glue the connections; this will help hold the LEDs in place and provide some protection against shorting out any connections (figure 25).
	Slide the cap into the PVC, cap top first (figure 26). You may have noticed that my PVC is already painted flat black. I use cheapo Wal-Mart spray paint, just need to touch it up a little every couple of years. You can paint the PVC before or after you assemble, just don't paint the LEDs!
	Carefully push the cap into the PVC with the flathead screwdriver. Push the screw driver against the cap, not the LEDs (figure 27).
	When you're finished it should look like (figure 28)
	When you are ready to use it, plug a battery in, shove the battery into the tube (don't cram it up against the wiring to hard), and place where ever you want (figure 29). I love the fact that there are no wires to mess with.

figure 25.

figure 26.

figure 27.

figure 28.

figure 29.

Now that you are this far, there is a lot more you can do if you want; add stands, switches, power cables, etc, so enjoy.

Happy Halloween!