LED M6

[DocBrown86]

I seem to be having trouble finding M6 LED strands with white cords.... I am re-vamping a santa and reindeer with LEDs, So I need White M6s with white cord, and also green bulbs w/ white cord, and red bulbs w/ white cord.
If only white w/white cords exist, I could always buy the red and green with green cords and just take them out and put them in the white cord. But again, I cant find anything with white cord except icicle and nets...

[Max-Paul]

Doc,
it is going to be a hard to find item. But I want you to understand. Hardly no one makes LED bulbs that are socketed. Most are molded into the base and wires. In past years Target and a few other places sold LED strings that the LED bulbs were replaceable. Problem is that rain water got into the sockets and the LED leads rusted and the strings failed.

Good luck on your hunt for white wired LED strings.

[DocBrown86]

Oh wow... I guess all I have used so far are the Target ones. I did not realize the bulbs cannot come out to be replaced with other colors. This just made my project a lot harder!

[Dave H1]

How about these ???????????

http://www.christmas-leds.com/productinfo_v3.aspx?productid=FS-PW

[DocBrown86]

Dave H1 wrote:

How about these ???????????

http://www.christmas-leds.com/productinfo_v3.aspx?productid=FS-PW

Haha that would work. But it sure would be a TON of them connected to make the full run. I'll snap a photo of what I am trying to re-do, perhaps that will help give a better idea of what could work.

Ok, here it is. I dug it out of the attic! This is it minus one of the deer (I didn't want to get the other one down, but they are identical). Standard mini lights. The deer is all white, minus the eye...green. 1 stinkin' green bulb.
The santa has a red hat and sleeve, like 12-15 bulbs. The sleigh is green (not the sleigh blades, just the box), hard to tell, a big reason why I want to change to LEDs. Rest is white. Any suggestions? I'm looking for a cost effective/resourceful plan. Basically I don't want to use a 70 count green strand for 1 eye....


Attached files

[Dave H1]

Have you considered converting them over to 12v led? Here are a couple of pics of my wire frame dogs and dog house. I will admit that it was a time consuming task but well worth the final outcome. Many people think that it is a piece of neon artwork.

Attached files

[Dave H1]

and here is the day time photo




Attached files

[flogger7]

Dave H1 wrote:

Have you considered converting them over to 12v led?  Here are a couple of pics of my wire frame dogs and dog house.  I will admit that it was a time consuming task but well worth the final outcome.  Many people think that it is a piece of neon artwork.

What kind of led did you use?

They look great

[Tremor30]

What you want is white wire M6 clear and just buy a Green Combo clip to go over it.
http://www.christmas-leds.com/category_v3.aspx?categoryID=336

However Dave's Idea of using LED strip is probably the best. They look fantastic! Great job!

[Dave H1]

flogger7 wrote:

Dave H1 wrote:

Have you considered converting them over to 12v led? Here are a couple of pics of my wire frame dogs and dog house. I will admit that it was a time consuming task but well worth the final outcome. Many people think that it is a piece of neon artwork.

What kind of led did you use?

They look great

I just grabed the first one I found on ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/48cm-48-LED-Flexible-Strip-Light-Lamp-Bulb-White-12V-N-/200720456927?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2ebbdf1cdf

They come in all of the standard colors and varying lengths. The biggest challenge is that they come with 26 ga wire (or smaller), Put the razor blade and strippers down (at least the wire ones) I used a lighter to melt the insulation away. There are only a few strands of wire on each side.

I also did my north star with these lights. When on at 100%, they light up my neighbors house across the street, generally run them at 70%

[LORisAwesome]

I was wondering if the color caps would work with white LED's?

Might we worth a try. I've seen some incandescent wire frames with the color caps, and they looked great.

Jerry

[DocBrown86]

I'll probably get some color caps. My only concern with that, at this point is that they will make the LEDs dimmer.
I also noticed the site said if you are doing a fixture, such as my Santa, with multiple colors and white, you should get the clear caps to go over the white ones as well to keep it looking uniform. Think there is a need to cover the white ones too? Or should I just cover the ones that need to be red and green...

I also read this:
This size will fit most M6 and Concave Wide Angle 5MM LED light strings.

NOTE - If your wire frames have a lot of detail in them, we suggest that you use the 5MM Combo Clips with the M6 light strings.

If your frames are large with little detail, use the longer M5, M6 or Incandescent Combo Clips. There is also nothing wrong with mixing sizes of combo clips on the same frame.

Just adds to my confusion.... What would you say for the picture I posted?

[Steven]

Dave H1 wrote:

Here are a couple of pics of my wire frame dogs and dog house.

Impressed!

[rainyoregonchristmas]

I was told by someone once that when they didn't have the exact color of LED they wanted, they took white ones and a sharpie marker and spent A LOT of time coloring the lights the color they wanted. It would work for your lone green light.

[Dennis Laff]

Hi I just bought a bunch of led m5 strings with white wire and removable bulbs from loris lights they sell wire frames they dont list the sets on their website but email lori and tell her what you want i bought thease for some wireframes i'm doing so i could change the colrs where i needed different colors

[LORi P]

DocBrown86 wrote:

I seem to be having trouble finding M6 LED strands with white cords.... I am re-vamping a santa and reindeer with LEDs, So I need White M6s with white cord, and also green bulbs w/ white cord, and red bulbs w/ white cord.
If only white w/white cords exist, I could always buy the red and green with green cords and just take them out and put them in the white cord. But again, I cant find anything with white cord except icicle and nets...

If M5 are acceptable, you can find lights in a variety of colors with white wire strings here: http://www.magicinthesky.com/lighting/2012.pdf
for the sleigh, etc.

Then use a color cap where single bulbs are needed - like for the eyes.

[Guest guest]

@Max Paul: Target, Wal-Mart, Lowes, Walgreen's, Big Lots, K-Mart all still sell LED replacable bulb strings, whether or not you can get them with white wire, I don't recall seeing white wire but on some pre-formed type things like snowflakes or stars.

@DOC: However, if you have REPLACABLE LED bulb strands, YES, you can take the LED OUT of the socket and replace it with another color, I took a white LED strand {green wire} and converted it to a GREEN LED strand just by replacing the bulbs.

BUT, and this is a big caveat, the green LEDs may require a lower or higher voltage than the LED's you're replacing, what I did was replace one LED at a time, plug in, test and then do the next LED, it takes some time, but if all LED's light no brighter than the first one you put in, you'll be fine, HOWEVER, if by each install of a Green {or whatever color you're converting too}, the LED's glow brighter than the normal LED's that were in the string, STOP and put the other LED's back in the strand.

Otherwise you will end up with an overloaded string which could catch fire if left on unattended for any length of time.

But as long as each LED lights uniform with the others and they don't start glowing brighter than normal, you should be okay.

Just use a pair of needle nose pliers to take out the original LED being careful NOT to break the original LED's leads, just in case you have to put it back, you will also need a pair of cutters to trim the new LED leads AFTER you bend the leads in place, cut them prior and they may be too short. Also make sure you know the polarity of the LED taken out of socket and make note, longer lead is usually the + or anode side of the LED. You want to insert the new LED exactly the same way the original came out or 2 things could happen if put in backwards, you will either get a LED that doesn't light and will be in all probabilty destroyed and no longer work or worse, you may let out the secret smoke inside the LED {and that stuff smells horrible too!} and the LED could POP, i.e. literally explode open. So make sure and double and triple check you're inserting the LED in the same polarity as the original came out of the socket.

So, yes, it can be done, it is very time consuming, so many of the others suggestions would be much quicker, easier and safer, but if you really want to attempt it, the above is the information you need on how to do it. If the string is sealed, then you're defintely out of luck on changing out any of the LED bulbs in such a strand.

Good Luck!

[Gman7711]

All this talk got me wondering how many lights I have......... Only 4,500 on 48 channels and 3 20amp breakers....... I can't imagine 35,000!!!

[Guest wbottomley]

Gman7711 wrote:

All this talk got me wondering how many lights I have......... Only 4,500 on 48 channels and 3 20amp breakers....... I can't imagine 35,000!!!

Uh... try 150K.