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looking for LED wire

jfespinoza

jfespinoza

Limp Gawd
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Joined
Feb 4, 2007
Messages
131
I am looking for skinny led wire something like the picture below. If I can get it in different colors that's a plus. Also whats a good gauge size for LED wire?
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jfespinoza said:
I am looking for skinny led wire something like the picture below. If I can get it in different colors that's a plus. Also whats a good gauge size for LED wire?

20-26 guage wire is good for a single LED. Go to radio shack or Home depot and buy about 20ft of their speaker wire.

Almost any speaker wire will power a single LED without question... They also come strapped together, making for a very clean and easy cabling job.
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Wouldn't speaker wire be harder to solder then lets say straight cable wire?
 
jfespinoza said:
Wouldn't speaker wire be harder to solder then lets say straight cable wire?
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Not to be an ass... :D But define "harder to solder"... I am in no way a "solder master" but as long as the wire is more than 12-15 gauge I find it easy to tack it together... you might want to grab some of that "de-soldering" braid from radioshack just in case you do mess up. :cool: That stuff works miracles 'yo.
 
jfespinoza said:
Wouldn't speaker wire be harder to solder then lets say straight cable wire?
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Do you mean multi-strand vs single strand? Multi-strand is almost always easier to solder. One notable exception is when you are inserting wire into a small hole - single strand enters the hole easier. If you are talking specifically about soldering wire to the solid leads on an LED - I'd rather use multi-strand. However, I'd always look at LED socket options before direct soldering.

I'm sure you can easily find someone with an entirely different opinion.
 
AciDeX said:
Not to be an ass... :D But define "harder to solder"... I am in no way a "solder master" but as long as the wire is more than 12-15 gauge I find it easy to tack it together... you might want to grab some of that "de-soldering" braid from radioshack just in case you do mess up. :cool: That stuff works miracles 'yo.
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The only real solder I've done is mod-chips to xboxs and I used single strand wire for that. I just thought using multi-strand the strands would want to fray out instead of (single stand) just connect one end to the other and BAM! You bust on a towel and take a nap.
 
jfespinoza said:
The only real solder I've done is mod-chips to xboxs and I used single strand wire for that. I just thought using multi-strand the strands would want to fray out instead of (single stand) just connect one end to the other and BAM! You bust on a towel and take a nap.
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Lolz... Yea I see where your coming from(no pun... gross), hell if you can solder friggen a mod chip on an xbox you can solder some thicker wire on a LED.... Just gotta get used to it :D
Whats the LED's for? Power/ HDD?
 
I wanna hide some LED's up in my case and make it look pretty and chinny, BUT I don't want to have to hide big ugly wires.Get it? I went black and I NEVER wanna go back. Big black wires hurt :( J/K
 
You need to tin the wire before you try to solder it to the leads. Just strip the insulation back 1/16"-1/8", tin the end of the wire. Cut the leads on the led short, but make not of which one is the negative lead (the shorter one), put a little bit of solder on your iron, hold the wire next to the lead and touch the solder to the wire and the lead, it should make a good connection.

We use 24 gage wire for single led's, and that is probably what is usually on the led's in your case. anything from 20-24 gage should be just fine, and not very hard to solder at all.

Heres a good trick that I've learned... measure how long you need the leads, and then add between 4"-8" (4 inches is perfect for a 16" lead, if you are making it longer, add more) then solder the wires to the leads. Put some 3/32" heat shrink on it to cover up the leads, and then use your electric drill to twist the wires (just put the led in the chuck and hold the other end of the wires with some needle nosed pliers.) You will get some very nice looking leds on leads. Twist them down tight, you can always pull on them to get the length just right.

I've done this on upwards of 700 led's and it is really fast and easy.

Another trick that we use to tin wires is to get some paste flux (like you use with copper pipes). Strip your wires back, and stick them into the paste flux past the stripped part. I do this with 10-20 wires at a time. Fan the wires out and grab your iron. Put a nice sized blob of solder onto the tip. Now all you have to do is touch the solder blob onto the tip of each wire and voila, the wire is tinned. The solder even gets wicked up under the insulation.
 
jfespinoza said:
Big black wires hurt :( J/K
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:D :D :D

dude...

haha, Though I do know what you mean. You can always sleeve the colored ones, too. I put a couple LEDs in my old Lian Li case, but my new rig has no lights at all. My current G70B case came with the type like in the OP's pic, I used 24 gage from Radio shack to add the extras.
 
Great post TMan1876.

The 22ga zip cord I listed above is quite useful for such things.

$2.75 for 25 feet.
 
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