red LED to white or yellow?

Post by **aferguson** » Sat May 16, 2009 2:54 pm

i have a little blinkie that i bought at a dollar store to create an effect in a custom i'm doing. A blinkie is a little badge a person wears that has little LED lights that blink on and off rapidly. Ravers wear them all the time.

Anyway, the only blinkies i could find had red lights and i need the light to be white or yellow, not red. I've tried painting, putting yellow plastic over it etc but the red light colour comes burning through.

Is there any way to change the colour of an LED or am i stuck with it being red?

Killerf6 · Post by **Killerf6** » Sat May 16, 2009 6:41 pm

You could always change out the LED. Other than that I don't think there would be too much you could do to go from red to a lighter color, err colour for you aferg

Radio Shack has them for $1.99 for a two pack.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index ... Id=3060980

Ruger · Post by **Ruger** » Sun May 17, 2009 6:54 am

Pretty much what he said. Especially for the red ones. Yellow, you can paint and change the hue a bit, and white you can do quite a bit to, but the red, well, they're really red. Now that LED's are fairly cheap and plentiful, it might be different, but I remember when you could get little sleeves that fit over them to change the color, again they worked pretty well on white, so-so on yellow, and did very little on red. And I think I only ever saw them for the standard size LED's, if the ones you're talking about (from the little blinking buttons) are the ones I'm thinking off, they're pretty small.

Either way, I think Radio Shack is probably your best bet. Remeber to pickup some of the little spring loaded heatsinks for soldering, as you don't want to overheat the LED's when soldering them in. Plus, the heatsinks make handly little clamps for holding tiny parts for painting. I use them more for that than soldering!

MV