mseepman,
nice find on the soldering but im going to stick with the first one you found. dont really need the holder and glasses considering ill be soldering when all the stars are bolted to the heatsinks.


roblarss,
its a tough call. whats frustrating me is that cdiweb.com has them for half the price futureelectronics sells them for and $40 cheaper than wattsupply.com BUT cdiweb.com doesnt keep them in stock and the guy was rude. so i could take my chances with wattsupply out of the US and hope I dont get dinged at the border or use futureelectronics.... decisions decisions.

thats something like 20 LEDs i could buy if CDIweb had them.



did i just start using LEDs as monetary unit? WTF

so, it looks like im not going with the big aluminium heatsink design for two reasons
1. it gets heavy fast and is hard to hang
2. shipping gets expensive really fast ($150 for one 10x20 heatsink!!! to my house)

so, instead, ive following some advice of the larger builds and i think im going with aluminium u channel with small CPU heatsinks + fans attached (around 12). Once i narrow down how im going to do this, ill post some more models.

I ended up making my own heatsink also as the shipping costs were crazy. I used a 1/4" aluminum plate and the fins are 1/8" aluminum angle. I just used some heatsink compound between the 2 pieces and riveted the angle to the plate. Made it nice as all the leds are on the plate and can go exactly where I want them. I then have 2 12v computer fans on top of each module. Havent had any problems yet.
With channel you can probably just mount the stars to the bottom face and then connect all the channel together on the ends. You just need to make sure you have plenty of heat dissipation for the heat. Mine starts to warm up slightly when I turn the fans off. Going to put a high temperature cutout on it soon..

heatsink
 

to hang your heatsink-go to grandview rona in the specialty bolt section,and get bolts with a hole drilled at the end of the thread(or there are other bolts that you can use)drill a hole in your heatsink to fit your threaded shaft,and drill a larger hole over it to fit the head of the bolt.if you need to you can come over and use my drill press

any link's ore pictures of DIY heat sink

at this time I stil have 4 left (6x10), however would need more, and are wondering what would be best, as now my unit is nice 6x 24 with 28 LED and first had in mind to make all units like this

maybe one big one

other alternative is to use 1 ore 1.5 inch square aluminium pipe, mont them on there and blow air in the pipe, you can even derect this air out of the room!

TAGGING ALONG. :biggrin:

This is funny...today I saw a thread on RC asking about this build and why it had been deleted off of RC. I had heard that you had been banned Milad but what I didn`t realize was that by posting on that thread where they were asking about you, I would get penalized myself.

Talk about Tyranny. So glad Canreef is not like that.

Soldering Irons
 

As someone who's owned an online electronics company that sold soldering irons and who's done a LOT of soldering, I'd say if you can afford $100, buy this: http://www.hvwtech.com/products_view.asp?ProductID=209

I have 2 of them.

If that's too rich for you, get this:

http://www.hvwtech.com/products_view.asp?ProductID=207

I have one of these too (in the toolbox).

The station has adjustable temperature (which you'll never adjust) and a nice stand to hold th iron. It's heats up in seconds and is excellent quality and a very good price. The second one is also very good -just without the adjustability and stand.

Those links are to a Calgary company. Good people, reasonable shipping. It's worth noting that they also sell a whole range of microcontrollers and their development tools, like the Arduino -if you're inclined to go that route.

thats hilarious. I just saw that on there. Water under the bridge for me but they seem to still hate me.

dividerdude, those stations look nice. might have to add that to my list.

Yeah, they are the 'proper' tool for the job. Maybe a bit much to justify the station for a single project but you really do get what you pay for and the $20 - $30 'no-name' irons you'll get at the corner electronics place really aren't worth the $.