LEDS FROM NGINEERING.COM!!!

The group NGINEERING was at the supertrains last week, showing off their newest stuff,, and i have to admit,,, IT BLEW MY SOCKS OFF!! they ve brought the led down to .39 of a mm!! and the lights no bigger than a tip of a pin,, but so strong,, you d swear it was a hoax!! tim, from ngineering, showed me a fire chip that he had,, the chip itself was 3 mm square!!! and the fire effect from the red/ orange led,was unbelieveable!!! i was so taken, i had to melt a credit card at their booth. check out their stuff,, its absolutely AMAZING!!! www.ngineering.com canada mike

Ngineering has a lot of great products, like their flasher units and other microprocessor-controlled accessories. 0402 LEDs are available from a number of sources.
Here's what you can do in Z scale with a white 0402 SMD LED:



Here's the construction article:

jamesriverbranch.net/detail_8.htm

Yes!!! If anyone knows about cool stuff in Z, it is D. K. Smith.

I got my start with nano LEDs from Ngineering about 5 years ago. When you start doing internet searches, you will start to find cheaper sources. But as far as the super mini electronic circuits, Ngineering is breaking awesome ground!!

If it's 0402 nano LEDs you want, try

www.kingbrightusa.com

Hobo Tim

Also try www.ModelTrainSoftware.com , Evan Designs, the makers of Model Builder program. The have some nice stuff.

This is a thread we could sink our teeth into! Thanks for posting the links

your absolutely right on the KINGBRITE.COM they have the cheapest nano leds i ve found yet!! still a bit green on these, i ordered the smallest they had,,BIG MISTAKE!!!! they showed up at .49 by.76! i had to buy a kids microscope just to pull one out of it protective plastic!! never thought they ve gotten this small, i took some non coated 40 guage wire and tried to solder one together,,,no way. even with a 1/8th tip, there was no way to get the solder on before the led was cooked, hahaha,, soo crazy!!

so i reordered by phone this time,, asking for the 2.5mm by 1 mm sized leds. i bought 100 of each color they had,, it was less then 70 buks us, and worth every penny!! very easy to add wire to, i ve now got cars, trucks, individual buildings rooms and my personal favorite,, my cabooses fully lighted up!!! kingbrite the place to go,, but like i say,, know what your looking for,, or you ll end up with 50 buks of leds you need a electron microscope to wire up!!! canada mike:side:

liltoot wrote:

your absolutely right on the KINGBRITE.COM they have the cheapest nano leds i ve found yet!! still a bit green on these, i ordered the smallest they had,,BIG MISTAKE!!!! they showed up at .49 by.76! i had to buy a kids microscope just to pull one out of it protective plastic!! never thought they ve gotten this small, i took some non coated 40 guage wire and tried to solder one together,,,no way. even with a 1/8th tip, there was no way to get the solder on before the led was cooked, hahaha,, soo crazy!!

so i reordered by phone this time,, asking for the 2.5mm by 1 mm sized leds. i bought 100 of each color they had,, it was less then 70 buks us, and worth every penny!! very easy to add wire to, i ve now got cars, trucks, individual buildings rooms and my personal favorite,, my cabooses fully lighted up!!! kingbrite the place to go,, but like i say,, know what your looking for,, or you ll end up with 50 buks of leds you need a electron microscope to wire up!!! canada mike:side:

Contact me offline if you want to get rid of the 0402s you got by mistake.

david at davidksmith dot com

liltoot wrote:

i was so taken, i had to melt a credit card at their booth. canada mike

LOL! Classic line!

Thanks for the great links and info. I am amazed at how small these LEDs are getting. Mike I would love to see some pictures of your lighted caboose, this is something I have been thinking about myself. Tim

I realize that this is a bit off topic but just thought I would share another lighting related tidbit, rope lights. It may not have any modeling applications but I have used it under my layout to very nice effect. I have a staging/ storage yard under my layout and I have tried various lighting arrangements but a string of rope lights under there not only did the trick but gave a very stunning look to the whole layout. Since I'm am modeling the rainy northwest I am experimenting with these lights to light the top of the layout as well, using different colors to create a drizzly rainy lighting effect. Here is a link to one supplier;

www.noleltylights.com

Tim

Nice to know there are 0402 leds. For Z this is going to be usable as 0603 is too lage for some things. I consider 0402 the limit for hand soldering. I once misordered capacitors and received 0201 size... And smaller is already coming.

Havoc wrote:

Nice to know there are 0402 leds. For Z this is going to be usable as 0603 is too lage for some things. I consider 0402 the limit for hand soldering. I once misordered capacitors and received 0201 size... And smaller is already coming.

I read a report from a fellow working on simulated 3D displays who hand-soldered almost a thousand 0201 SMD LEDs on a custom board. I don't disbelieve him, but from my own experience 0402s are enough of a challenge, having just finished a T scale (1:450) working crossing flasher that has four 0402s.



1-450.blogspot.com/2009/06/on-roll.html

I'm game to try 0201s, but I haven't found an online source for them yet.

David, This wins the prize this year. Cheers, Jim CCRR:cheer:

David K. Smith wrote:

... having just finished a T scale (1:450) working crossing flasher that has four 0402s.

Truly AMAZING, Mr. Smith!

So... How many hours did this consume?
More importantly... How many curse words were involved?

Alex
Tokyo, Japan

TechRep wrote:

David K. Smith wrote:

... having just finished a T scale (1:450) working crossing flasher that has four 0402s.

Truly AMAZING, Mr. Smith!

So... How many hours did this consume?
More importantly... How many curse words were involved?

Alex
Tokyo, Japan

Hours: I didn't keep track, but I'd estimate about 20.
Language: Moderate. Could have been worse.

now that looks just awesome david,,, great job!!! im only 46 and i m finding working with these small leds a super challenge! each time i start something new, when it comes to the adding of those tiny pinheaded leds,, my eyes just start to hurt!! personally i think they have to design the resister/leds combination,, as this would help out so much. just have the highest added to the led, if you need more resistance, you can always just add another to dim it down. i know this from a few screwups, where the light was so intense it didn t make sense. and the resisters they re bringing out now are even SMALLER than the pinheaded led!!! as a friend in electronics just sent me a bunch of 40Ma units ,,,they all wouldn t cover the bottom of a thimble!!! i said to him///im having enough troubles trying to get a wire in these lil leds,, and you send me these!// he did send them as a joke,, but it just hit me when i was them,,,why not incorporate both led and resister into one unit!! i ve been studying the sizes of leds for 6 months now,, if you ve read my other posts,, im like a dog with a bone when it comes to getting an idea to work right,, but this would be a great way to sell these miniature devices,, we all dont have electron microscopes!!! hahaha canada mike

ooooooo and yess,, i ll try n see if i can get a few picts of the latest caboose fixup,, my camera,,,ask alexis,,, is nt the best for super close up shots! but i will try. im trying to get my 12 car TEE set all lighted up. after seeing ali gencalp selling old passenger cars with new lighting,, i ve been itching to try it. canada mike

liltoot wrote:

why not incorporate both led and resister into one unit

One reason not to incorporate resistors into LEDs is that a resistor then restricts the LED to a single (or small range) of supply voltage. It would probably make them more expensive--probably more than the cost of separate components. There is also a problem of heat dissapation-both LED and resistor would generate heat, and together in a tiny package it might become an issue. There are a few LEDs made with built-in resistors, but these are large T1 type, made mostly for panel displays, and designed for standard 5 VDC supplies used by many IC circuits.

I've stopped using resistors altogether, and instead I use type CL2M 20ma current regulators. These are very small ICs that accept anything from 5 to 90 VDC, but safely power any standard LED (90% of LEDs use 20ma of current). The chips will drive from 1 to 4 LEDs, and they also solve the age-old problem of color brightness balancing (different color LEDs operate at different voltages, requiring different resistor values using the same supply). All LEDs are the same brightness with a constant current supply.

Cool David ! Now Z stuff should be easy.

I was suprised when I ordered some those mass retailer 1/220 cars on ebay that LED's in them. Front whites and rear reds. What the heck. So I opened them up and they had soldered 4 in series which means wire cuts and chip solder everywhere. Totally nuts. Glad to see yours looks better !!!

I think the 0201's are likely die only with mimimal encapuslation. Desinged for OEM stuff.

Of course, all of the smaller SMD LEDs are mostly die, with just enough encapsulation to protect the emitter itself. And the emitter is still a fraction of the size of the die, even for an 0201, so theoretically the LEDs could be made even smaller; it will reach a point, though, that handling becomes a real problem.