Bending LEDs

Another weekend well spent :)

I've soldered three more pillars and straightened around fifty wires. I've also started bending the leads on all LEDs, a really boring job, but doing this beforehand will make the soldering go much faster. As it turns out, bending one LED costs about as much time as soldering one. And the more I can do in batch, the better!

Here's what I started with: around 600 LEDs

And the result after an evening on the couch, watching TV while bending leads.

200 done, 400 to go :)

I've marked the green cathode with a marker on each LED, that lead will have point up when the LED is inserted into the jig. It's pretty easy to spot the correct lead by just looking into the package, but more on that later.

All leads are at a 90 degree angle of each other and the LED sits perfectly flat on a flat surface (my hand isn't flat obviously).  It takes about 30 to 40 seconds to bend the leads on one LED, I could've done this faster but I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and I was watching TV :) It costs about 1 hour per 100 LEDs, but hopefully it'll save some time when soldering.

The great thing about this project is that it's easy to spend anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours on it; you can just grab a box with all the tools/parts, do some work, and put it away when you're done or out of time. Cleaning up and getting started only takes a minute or two.

In other news, the PCBs I've ordered have been shipped last Friday! They'll probably arrive somewhere next week, but at least before the end of the month :)

Update 17-03: and a few more LEDs done, halfway there!