Position two of the sets one on top of the other. You should now have three sets of nine LEDs. Lastly, solder the cathode of the middle LED to one of the sides and trim away the excess. Once each of the four sides are soldered, move the clips to hold the corners together and apply solder to each. Use small clips to keep the legs clamped together while applying the solder. Solder the sides together, one pair on each side. Position them so that the legs point in the same counter-clockwise direction. The photos show the cathode pointing clockwise with the anode facing out, but I'd turn the LEDs around if I did it again in order to keep the leg from obstructing the view of the LED. Now we're ready to begin soldering.įirst place nine of the LEDs in your newly built jig. Make sure you bend the cathode in the same direction for all of the LEDs. The cathode is identifiable in three ways: 1) It's the shorter leg, 2) It's on the flat side of a round LED, 3) it's connected to the larger piece inside the LED. Once the jig is done we're going to bend the cathode of each LED in a 90 degree angle. The hole should have a tight fit around the LED since we don't want them to move around while soldering. I decided to space the holes around 5/8 of an inch apart (~15 mm) but the exact distance isn't critical. The jig will hold the LEDs in place while we solder them. To start we'll use a drill to create a jig out of a small piece of scrap wood. If that didn't make sense it will become self explanatory as we build the cube. Each of the nine LEDs on a level is connected to the corresponding LED on the other two levels through their anodes (positive leads). I'll refer to each of these sets as a "level". Each set of nine LEDs will share a common connection amongst their cathodes (negative leads). We'll need a total of 27 LEDs that will be grouped into three sets of nine. A cube of this size is about as big as it gets without introducing additional circuitry and complexity. This step largely follows the LED Cube 4x4x4 but we'll be building a 3x3x3 cube instead.
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