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Not fully without some kind of pulse width module and increased cost. It dims about 25%. My original set has 15 of these LED's in it. rather than the current design of 9 LEDs. I've run mine for 17 years and 70,000 miles I can assure you that at full brightness that they are not too bright. The 25% takes the edge off if you are in a rural area with no street or house lights.
I would consider these dim in comparison to the brightness of modern LCD instrument and infotainment screens.
Not fully without some kind of pulse width module and increased cost. It dims about 25%. My original set has 15 of these LED's in it. rather than the current design of 9 LEDs. I've run mine for 18 years and 70,000 miles I can assure you that at full brightness that they are not too bright. The 25% takes the edge off if you are in a rural area with no street or house lights.
I would consider these dim in comparison to the brightness of modern LCD instrument and infotainment screens.
Perry do you give an option of 9 vs. 15 LEDs? I have all lights, incl. AC controls changed to LED, I also have LED dimmer in use. I would rather use 15 diodes as my lights are pretty bright and I have dimmer turned down almost to min. I'm afraid that with my current setup your 9 LEDs could be too dark... Anyway, I'm in for a set regardless.
The 15 LED setup was the prototype. I found that the 9 LED setup gave much better light distribution with the inset lenses I designed. I'd have to redesign it as well as the internal wiring framework. I don't think you'll have an issue with brightness.
What did you use for the climate control? I had some 3MM LED's that barely fit into the switch housings and tried on 2 different controllers. SMD was not available for a reasonable price back then.
I used standard 3mm white LED (daylight color I think, definitely not cold white) paired with resistor. If memory serves me well I soldered them on the board instead of bulbs. For the switches I used the same LEDs but all I remember is that it was a pain to fit them there, especially recirculation button. I think that I had to trim the guts a little to make them fit. I also remember that I told myself never remove the ***** again because it will cause LEDS to fall out... I wish I took some pictures that day.
Hi Everyone. I received the LED units from the Ebay seller out of Thailand. They are similar to my 2nd production molds complete with 194 lamp bases and are hand cast in home made molds. The back of the reflector is removed for some reason.. maybe to save a little casting resin. I have no doubt the total design was taken from my originals from back in 2003. To my knowledge, I was the first to produce such a product for the late clusters. I have no patent or any kind of protection, and it's kind of flattering to be copied, but.... you can tell not much R&D went into this copy.
The electrical construction and light aiming is vastly different than mine. The first no-no here is the unit is wired in series with a single resistor. This is just like old Christmas lights, one goes out and they all go out. Mine are parallel with dedicated resistors so if a lamp or resistor fails, the remaining lamps stay lit with no change in intensity. The second part I see is the LED's actually shine onto a reflecting strip, not directly onto the gauges like mine. The reflector seems to be a metallic strip embedded into the casting. There is no special lenses on the 5mm LED's either - probably 120 degree lamps in what I would call 4000K color, slightly blue. I didn't test in the cluster but output at 12V is decent with some shadowing. The casting is about the same quality as my 2nd generation units.
Since pressure cast molds are very expensive and we're not really that close to a threshold number of people to make the investment worth while; what I would be willing to do is use my previous designs and hand cast molds. The finish will not be perfect as they are hand cast (just like before and similar to the ones below), but mine will have better light output and better redundancy, yellow white light, and you'll support a member who's been around here (and the email lists before it) for about 20 years.
For $50, the Ebay set isn't bad.
Mine using the old hand cast molds would run about $90.
My preference would be for the pressure cast but hand cast is not a bad option. As you say, I'm happy to support a member and will go with what the majority decides.
just tell us when and where you want the money to be sent... I definitely want your design and work, does it really matter if the cast is pressure or hand made? You will see it only once during installation and then, hopefully, never again. So what's the difference? I guess light pattern and intensity would be similar?
09-09-2019, 07:12 PM
