8/18/2017

My first Job out of College was as an engineer for an LED lighting manufacturer. One of the first things i learned, was that there are a ton of LED tape strips on the market, and they all work very similarly to each other.

While the LED tapes are bought and sold in 200 inch reels, they are really comprised of a bunch of 2 inch lights, that just repeat themselves 100 times. This made me realize that there’s no reason the 2″ pieces have to stay in a linear row.

I decided to turn an LED strip into a smiley face. The first thing i did was draw one of the 2 inch lights in AutoCAD. Then, i inserted a picture of a smiley face I found on the internet. I then copied and pasted the 2 inch light around the smiley and traced the eyes and mouth. I now had a blueprint for where i needed to place each 2″ piece to make the smiley face. The diameter of the smiley face ended up being 30″.

CAD Template

I printed out a 1:1 section as a template for soldering the pieces together. I used 4-Pin header pins to solder the pieces together.

1:1 Template

This LED light strip is made of a Red, Green, and a Blue LED. The colors can be mixed to produce many different colors.