LED Signal Mirrors
I stumbled across a web page that showed how to make your own LED signal mirrors. My first three thoughts were "cool", "that should be easy enough"
and "that's a nice cheap project". Boy was I wrong. They did turn out cool, but I was out to lunch on the easy and cheap. All in all this project spanned
almost four months, cost me $60 for replacement mirror glass, ended up wrecking most of the LED's and just stressed me out!
Here is how I did it.....
Here is the body that the mirror glass is glued to.
This is sort of what I wanted the "chevron" to look like.
Some plastic strips from the local hobby shop.
Some glue to bond the plastic strips, also from the local hobby shop.
I cut several chevrons, glued them together to get the right thickness. After cutting the chevron shape in
the mirror body I then used an epoxy to bond them both together. Then I drilled the holes for the LED's
Then I used hot glue to bond the LED's and resistor in the chevron.
I made up a quick template of the outside end of the mirror glass.
Then sandblasted the chevron on the mirror.
Turned out pretty good.
Then I ran the wires to each mirror.
This is where it all went to the crapper. Before I assembled the mirrors for the last time, I tested them; they
didn't work. The voltmeter indicated that everything was fine, but the LED's weren't illuminating. After a while
I figured out that I had the wrong size resistor, and after lots of testing found that the LED's I was using could not even be used
with my specifications. I damaged most of the LED's trying to get them out of the hot glue, and also broke both pieces
of mirror glass trying to put them back on when I wanted to take a break from this project.
This project ended up on the backburner for a month!
Then out of the blue, I saw these at Canadian Tire. Of course I bought them!
I had to re-do the chevron, but it turned out better than the original.
The final product.
They are not as bright as my original LED's, but are more than sufficient.
All in all, I'm happy with the end result.