Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

After about a years delay I am back to working on my UV LED exposure box.
I finally got my LED panels soldered and was getting ready to order parts for the power supply.

Not really looking forward to building that board, I decided to do a quick check on constant current sources. Generally they are very expensive, but a quick search on Mouser showed that there is now a 20ma constant current source meant for LEDs that cost 44 cents each. The part number is CL2N3-G from a company called Supertex. Note that this 20ma is also the nominal current needed by the UV LED's from Best Hong Kong, which I think several people have ordered.

I have some on order and should get them in a few days. I will do an update post on how well they work. However I figured I would mention it now in case someone else was working on a box and considering designing a power supply or using current limiting resistors. I think these constant current sources will work much better.

Also for the LED panels used stripboard/vero board from All Electronics.
For me, I organized as 11 rows with 7 LEDs each.That gives me a board big enough to adequately cover the largest board I built so far.