DIY Night blades

[aburkhardt]

LEDs came in the mail today. Didn't take much to wire these up. The hardest part was ordering all the supplies.


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[Katanadude]

Hey guys, just finished building one of my 710 blades for my 700N. Thanks for all the useful info posted here making my build go smoothly.

Question I have is should I clear coat the blades to protect the copper tape, LED's and resistors from nitro and exhaust?

Thanks

[aburkhardt]

Yes. I used a 2 part clear. It will help the components stick and protect then from solvents in the exhaust. This was by far the most expensive supply. I think you can buy a 2k clear rattle can for about 20 bucks. Don't forget to clear coat the canopy too!


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[Katanadude]

Very good, thanks aburkhardt.

[djsmeegy]

Hi guys, I've been inspired by you and I've done my 1st night blades for my t-rex 450. Yesterday I just tested the ballance of blades when turned on the heli for a lower speed.
I have 2 LEDs on each blade (top and bott). Using 100mAh lipo.
Here you can see pics.

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[muscleflex]

Very tempting to make one for my 700!

[muscleflex]

Ok sorry for asking but why do we only need the resistors on the red LED?

[electronjunkie]

Originally Posted by muscleflex

Ok sorry for asking but why do we only need the resistors on the red LED?

It is a good idea to have resistors on all LEDs. They are very nonlinear. Every color has a certain on-voltage. If that on-voltage is much less than 4.2v then the resistor can eat the difference instead of killing your battery.

If you have multiple colors in parallel then lower voltage colors like green and yellow may cause blue, purple and white to dim if the lower voltage colors don't get a resistor. Every color gets a different value. Usually choose a reaistor that puts you at 10-20mA but it really depends on that LEDs specs.

[jmtyndall]

About to order some 0805 leds and 1/8w resistors. My biggest concern is figuring out how to solder all that in series on the blade.

[clkandcjk]

I wire mine in parallel.

[jmtyndall]

Resistors should be in series with the LED

I turned my brain on for 3 seconds, I can leave a gap in the tape on top and on bottom. For top side lights, led goes on top, resistor on bottom. Opposite for bottom side lights

[jmtyndall]

Not seeing a whole lot of posts here about connectors.

What are people's thoughts on using the 3 pin arrangement versus something like a JST or micro dean's, molex etc?

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[clkandcjk]

I use the batteries that are made for the Blade nano series helicopters and bought matching pigtails to solder to the copper tape

[jmtyndall]

On 425mm blades it looks like? I was thinking of using a smaller pack, like the 100mah Proto-X battery

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[clkandcjk]

Yes, 425mm for my Trex 500. Those batteries look very similar. Whatever you do, consider that the blades will be spinning at high speeds that can pull connectors apart. Note that my configuration causes the centrifugal force to keep the connector pushed on the battery. What size blades are you doing?

[jmtyndall]

My copper strip is wide enough to put two leds in parallel. Might try to do that to increase the brightness

These leds seem so tiny, I'm not sure how bright they'll be




Anyone do this? Or one is good enough

[jmtyndall]

Welp, all soldered up. 2 LEDs per stripe. Call it redundancy. It does double my current draw, but I still figure I can get at least 3 flights out of a 150mah battery. I will do a could of test runs before flying them.

With that said, I'm going to order a couple of Nano CPX batteries to toss on the blades, and try to find some heat shrink.

Next step is to CA the leds. Just a drop per led? On the side between the blade and LED? Should I clear coat the blade after that?

[TheBum]

I didn't use CA on mine. I just hit the blades with a couple of coats of spray polyurethane to seal everything up.

[fastflyer20]

For my gassers that get fuel residue on the blades, I like to hit up the critical junctions with some thin CA then one thin coat of clear. The CA is fuel proof and I don't use two part clear.

The LEDs on the blades will be plenty bright. On my canopy I went from 3 cell to two cell, too bright is not good.

[jmtyndall]

I was worried the clear would make the blades unserviceable. But they should be long life anyways.

For now I plan to do a preliminary balance using solder to get the blades close to the same. Then I'll clear it and install batteries before doing a final balance. These blade will probably weigh 4lbs each when I'm done haha

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