this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
8 points (100.0% liked)

Ask Electronics

3173 readers
5 users here now

For questions about component-level electronic circuits, tools and equipment.

Rules

1: Be nice.

2: Be on-topic (eg: Electronic, not electrical).

3: No commercial stuff, buying, selling or valuations.

4: Be safe.


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Hello! I bought 30 simple UV leds (those with a big and a small leg, not a single strip). I'm trying to build a UV station to dry my resin but idk how to proceed. I tryed watching some videos but there is a lot of math to build that and I can't do it. I have 30 led lights, 5 resistors of 100 and 5 of 300. I wanted to use AA batteries. Do I need 8 of them?? Its not going to be turned on for long, just some 30 seconds at a time.

Can someone help me?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Do you have a datasheet/part number for the LEDs, or at least a picture and diameter?

Because battery voltage reduces over time, the LEDs will get dimmer as the battery drains fairly quickly. If possible, running it off a mains plugpack (e.g.12V like for a router or external hard drive) would be good.

An example UV LED has a forward voltage of nominally 3.7V. Two in series on a 12 (8x1.5V) supply gives us 12V-(2x3.7V) =4.6V to drop across the resistor. We want ~15mA, so need a very roughly (V/I =R) 4.6V/0.015A=300 ohm resistor.

When the battery is nearly discharged, at 1.1V/cell it will be 8.8V, giving 1.4V across the resistor and V/R=I 1.4V/300ohm= 4.7mA.

So you would connect each pair of LEDs as:

BAT+ RES +LED- +LED- -BAT all in series. Like this.

You'll need another 10 300 ohm resistors for 15 total, one per pair of LEDs.

[–] MissJinx 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Three in series per 300 ohm resistor would be OK with those.

[–] MissJinx 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you ao much! I'll Try!