Hello - want to make some wooden lamps with routed channels I’m putting LED strips in - don’t know if anyone has a favourite. So much crap on Amazon to wade through. Looking for something with good diffusion of light and cuttable anywhere, solderable ends etc.
Best cuttable LED strip lights for making a lamp?
I’ve been meaning to try these guys
Especially for projects where the strip is directly visible.
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Which colour do you want?
Are you looking for digital or analog LEDs?
Do you know which voltage you want?
How wide do you want the strips to be?
I must admit that I don’t know much about analog LEDs, but I’m very familiar with digital LEDs but there’s a lot of crossover.
Soft warm white, bright enough to read
Digital? Don’t know the difference
No idea, ideally a cheap power source
Thin, like 3-6mm
If you want them to be individually cuttable then you’ll need a 5V strip, this doesn’t affect the brightness unless it’s too long (the voltage will drop along the length.
If you go up to 12v, leds are generally in groups of three, so can’t be cut individually.
I’ve found what might be a suitable strip on Aliexpress - they’re all made in China so it’s cheaper to buy them from China.
You can power it from a USB power supply, so easy and safe.
There’s 120 leds per meter so they are reasonably dense.
Diffusion is relative to the distance of the leds from the diffuser and the opacity of the diffuser. You’ll need to experiment to get the exact look you want. Then cut your channels to suit.
Leds do get hot, which makes them fail, you’ll need to watch out for this as wood is quite a good insulator.
If they’re not as bright as you want/need, you can run two strips next to each other in one channel and still only be 6mm wide, but you’ll definitely need to check to see how hot they get.
Hope that helps…
I have some leftovers 12v led strips like the ones I’ve used in welding area, and ones im using in my kitchen, which I can show if you like. They cannot be cut in any position but are 2700k, high CRI, dense (480leds/5m), rather bright (around 10w ~ 100lm/m), don’t require drivers - powered by 12v directly, rather cheap and survived last two years without any issues. I’ve got them from amazon.
Oh nice - are they are a warm yellow or hard white light?
2700K warm white
Nice I would love to test them, I’ll go look at the Welding area first - when are you next in?
today in the evening or on Wednesday