LED's in Nano and Micro sizes.

2267 Views 8 Replies 4 Participants Last post by Gordon H, May 26, 2007

Takeshi

Discussion Starter · May 24, 2007

On May 20th last I attended one of the very few model rail shows in our area for Victoria.
One particular stand was to my avid interest.
Ngineering Model Railroad Products and Services.
On it were displayed various mock ups of their products using sub-miniature LED's,wiring,fine stainless tubing,capacitors,resistors and various other electronic goodies.They have the yellow white LED's plus some incandescent types.

There was another thread talking about LED's earlier in respect of sources for yellow white LED's.

The Nano LED's look tiny compared in their photos to a 1.2mm grain of wheat lamp.The micro LED's are only very slightly larger.
I was very impressed and can think of many applications for use.

Their website is very interesting and full of useful information about their products and they have many,many tips and instructions for us hobbyists.
One tip was for a "Jewelers Bib".Can't tell you how many times I have been on the floor looking for tiny parts that somehow seemed to fly off into space.
There are plans for the bib but not being a sewer expert I took one of my old T-shirts [white] and cut it up the back and arround half of the neck band leaving the neckband intact in the front thus creating a "bib" and with a bit of triming and Velcro at strategic points I can now sit at my bench with a trough the width of the bench and hopefully no more scratching about on the floor.The Velco makes it easy to leave the work for any reason i.e. tea breaks.

Here is the link

To website
You will see on the web site there is a distributor in the UK.

Cheers,
Bryan.

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Gofer

· #2 · May 25, 2007 (Edited by Moderator)

Thanks for the link Brian, as you say very useful site full of information. The SMD LED's are a nice product but I can't believe the prices they're charging.

Have a look here for what would seem to be the same thing but at a fraction of the price:

http://www.rapidonline.com/products.aspx?t...face+Mount+LEDs

I've used loads of those SMD LED's in white and red and the light output from them is absolutely amazing given the size.

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Takeshi

Discussion Starter · #3 · May 25, 2007

QUOTE (Gofer @ 25 May 2007, 08:54) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Thanks for the link Brian, as you say very useful site full of information. The SMD LED's are a nice product but I can't believe the prices they're charging.

Have a look here for what would seem to be the same thing but at a fraction of the price:

http://www.rapidonline.com/products.aspx?t...face+Mount+LEDs

I've used loads of those SMD LED's in white and red and the light output from them is absolutely amazing given the size.
Thanks for that link Gofer!I wish I had heard about them before!I want to improve coach lighting etc,etc.
You are right about the prices.
Glad you saw this and added link otherwise however would I know!
Cheers,
Bryan.

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John Webb

· #4 · May 25, 2007

Very interesting - but still not small enough to make a 5 by 7 matrix for a 4mm scale Theatre Matrix - see the thread in the signalling sub-forum.

Regards,
John Webb

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Gofer

· #5 · May 25, 2007

If you ever got LED's that small John I reckon it would be practically impossible to connect any wires to them!

Having a rough idea what you're after, here's another angle: Would it be more possible to use a larger commercially available matrix mounted below the baseboard and feed the complete picture so to speak via a single fibre optic to the signal post.

Just an thought.

Steve

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Takeshi

Discussion Starter · #6 · May 25, 2007 (Edited by Moderator)

QUOTE (John Webb @ 25 May 2007, 19:49) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Very interesting - but still not small enough to make a 5 by 7 matrix for a 4mm scale Theatre Matrix - see the thread in the signalling sub-forum.

Regards,
John Webb
I went to that forum added a bit then read that others have done it all before.All very interesting anyway.
I am sure I will have a taxing time soldering these tiny leds as it is.
Gofer seems to have a good plan for you.
Regards,
Bryan.

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John Webb

· #7 · May 26, 2007

Gofer,
You would need a 'Coherent' optic fibre to maintain the shape of the display; that is the bundle of fibres forming the large single one are carefully kept in the same order throughout its length. This makes for expense in making and therefore in buying. There would also be the problem of bending it through 90 degrees at the top of the post. The individual small fibres put together by the signal constructor seems to show more promise, therefore.

To use surface-mount LEDs it would probably be necessary to make up a small PC board to which they could be fixed, but that's not a great problem.

The irksome thing is that there are small dot-matrix displays of the right height but capable of showing a number of digits/letters, but it does not appear to be possible to break these down into single 5 by 7 matrices, alas!

Regards,
John Webb

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Gofer

· #8 · May 26, 2007 (Edited by Moderator)

I can see where you're coming from John with the coherent fibre optic problem. I suppose mirrors (as in periscope) would be out of the question?

Steve B

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Gordon H

· #9 · May 26, 2007

QUOTE (Gofer @ 26 May 2007, 14:52) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I can see where you're coming from John with the coherent fibre optic problem. I suppose mirrors (as in periscope) would be out of the question?
The problem with this approach would be that it would only be visible from a very narrow angle, i.e. from directly head-on. To project it onto a translucent surface at the signal face would require special optics to bring the beam to a focus at that point.

Although Rapid do come highly recommended (I dread to think how much stuff I have bought from them in recent years!), they do not currently stock 0402 sized LEDs in white ('nano' sized at Ngineering). Everything else but, unfortunately, otherwise I would be using them myself!
These do, however, seem the only way forward to a matrix display at present, as there are no other obvious ways of doing it in anything less than O Gauge (and I have looked into it many times over the years). In principle, a 7x5 matrix of these would work out at about 9mm by 4.5mm, assuming it were possible to arrange them virtually touching each other. This style of LED is rectangular (0402 means 40 thou by 20 thou), so you could make the array either tall and thin, or short and wide, depending which way round you placed them. Making the array with a fixed 'pixel' pitch horizontally and vertically would probably look a bit better, but would result in something a bit bigger than the minimum. Perhaps a combination of the two orientations might produce the optimum result. It is unfortunate that LED display manufacturers don't seem to see a large enough market for an integrated matrix display of this kind of size, because there are no technical reasons why they couldn't be produced. It's only a matter of packaging.
The kind of individual LEDs we are talking about here are really designed for surface mounting on PCBs, not for wiring, so attempts to do so are not for the faint-hearted!

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