# LED Reflectors



## ScreamReaper (Feb 21, 2010)

Last season we built all of our own LED lighting using this tutorial from Allen Hopps:






They worked great for us! But this year I want to expand on the idea and built some multi LED spots and mini floods. I've got it all figured out as to how i'm going to build these, but i need some LED reflectors that don't cost 4 times as much as the LED's themselves.

I found reflectors on this and many other sites, but as you can see the are pretty pricy:

http://www.newark.com/led-reflectors

Does anyone know where I can go to get these on the cheap? Or even something that has a wider diameter than the tomato steaks in the tutorial above?

I think these will make a great addition to the spots we made last year.


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## fontgeek (Jul 24, 2006)

PVC piping for wider tubes.
For reflectors, you might look at 99 cent stores for flashlights. Flea markets and swap meets for the same. Somewhere along the line you have to decide how much your time and travel is worth for the "savings" compared to buying reflectors.
Heck, you might consider using some CDs for reflectors.


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Electrical conduit might also be an option if you're looking to stay with something metal and fairly thin walled. IMHO, I'd probably scrap the reflector all together - just buy the LEDs with the beam dispersion you want...a dozen-or-so degrees for spots, maybe 45-ish to 140-ish for floods.

The main reason to use a reflector is if you want a perfectly co-axial beam with a bright center spot and a diffuse halo (like flashlights put out) - and because people have grown to expect flashlights to have a reflector. For haunting you could probably simulate that effect with a narrow beam central LED surrounded by 2-4 wide angle LEDs. Or even step it up with say an orange center LED and purple flood LEDs.


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## Gory Corey (Nov 17, 2006)

Keep in mind when you use a wider beam angle LED, the lumens decrease dramatically.
So going from a 5mm with a 15-25° beam with say 8000mcd to 120° beam will result with an output of about 450mcd.
That is a huge difference for point source illumination.

Plan to array the leds with wider beams to give you comparable illumination.
Doing so will mean a larger housing.
Ahh the trade offs 

Or you can step up to a better LED like the 5050 smd or the cree 1 watt, which will then require giving some thought to drivers, heat dissipation, housing and power supply requirements.

Once you do that tho, you may or may not be able to maintain a waterproof housing (crees like ventilation, arrays of 3825s and 5050 do too, or at least an oversized heatsink)

The trade off becomes you will need less devices compared to 5 and 10mm leds since the output of these types of leds are often optimized for wide beam illumination.

For example, our led flex ribbon, uses 120° beam 5050 leds. The brightness is stellar with the wide beam angle.





A nice feature is that the strips can be cut into smaller sections, 3 leds per with a 4" length or any 4" continuous increment. Plus they are only 1/2" wide and a 1/4" deep. Solder new leads to the strip and silicone the ends for a waterproof flood strip just the size needed. Doesn't hurt the strips have the resistors built in already.


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