Soldering wires to a star, a little differently? - Video

Just a short? video on a different approach to soldering wires to a star. The problem is flat reflectors like the HD2010 and many others. It is usually a problem in many thrower lights. When you use thicker wires, then there are issues with the reflector hitting the wires, or not being able to get the reflector down far enough, to focus the led. Hopefully, this video shows a solution that most modders can do, if they think it's worthwhile. Some of you may already do this. There's nothing new about modding, from what I have found. Usually someone else is already doing it, but I haven't seen a video on it.

Hah, wow that’s pretty smart. I’ve never thought about doing it like that. Nice job OL

You just have to use Very little solder on the wire, so that it doesn't migrate and touch the side of the star. It needs a really fine point iron tip. With the insulation flush like that, it keeps the solder joint restricted and helps to avoid having a short to the star.

I do my reflector interference lights differently, I use a bit of nickel banding (like for battery packs) soldered to the pads, have that extend out past the reflector base, solder a wire to that and then put a piece of shrink tube over the whole thing.

Next time I do one that way (or have my SR51 open) I’ll take pic’s showing that method. This way is how I use to do it before I got the tiny shrink tube needed and started using the band method…

Sweet, thanks for sharing.

You’ve got a steady hand for a supposedly old guy :slight_smile: . I like this method but I don’t think I can pull it off. Guaranteed shorts and many a cusses.

Maybe if I lay off coffee for a few month… but I can’t pull that off either. :bigsmile:

But thanks for the video. It’s a very nice technique.

Some days I don’t shake, some days I can’t hold the iron still with two hands. I try to pick the steady days for videos.

Thanks for sharing! I’ve taken some solid core copper wire and hammered it out before, but it looked a mess. It did the job, but if you thought regular wire insulation recedes a lot when heated, wait until you’ve hammered part of the insulation thin too, and watch your uninsulated end of wire magically double in length!

May be easier to just use solder braid, but, like the flattened wire idea. Tin wire, flatten, then bend where only original insulation may touch the star. The wire butt soldered may break away as me clumsy so would be nice to keep the wire in one piece and flattened on end.

Thanks for video!

Good work and good video OL. Thanks. Unlike the nickel banding or copper braid, your sheet copper is unlikely to shift around once the light is assembled. (so no need to glue it in place, that seems like a big advantage)

a very good idea, thanks for the video, going to use this method some day!

Neat trick !

I don't really have the bandwidth to watch many videos. From what I gather of the comments, it sounds like you are flattening a thick wire (tin, flatten, bend). Great idea. Will definitely need to try to keep that idea in mind.

Great video!

I am using a small piece of flat copper sheet stock about .012" thick and butting the wire up against it, so that only the thickness of the sheet is on top of the star.

So after being skeptical this was any better than my nickel band method I went ahead and tried this on my EagleEye X6 yesterday night and it worked great. Its sort of different methods for different applications, not really competing methods to do the same thing, this way wouldn’t work if the holes in the HS wern’t spaced ~16-20mm apart but in lights like that of works great.

Thanks for the new technique O-L!

Wonderful, just wonderful.

I think you've mentioned it before, but now it makes more sense with the video.

I am going to try it as well.

Thanks.

Thanks OL, very instructive. I’ve used copper tabs for some time, tinning all the joints in advance really speeds up the process and avoids overheating the LED or driver components.

Great solution of an annoying problem.

Thanks for taking the time to show this.

John.