help in making infra red light!

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In the 1970s, we used Kodak Wratten #87 filters, which could be bought in 10cm by 10cm sheets for not much money, but Kodak stopped making them. The story was that then new environemntal regulations had rendered manufacture of the necessary dye too expensive for the market. (#87 filters may be back; I haven't checked in years.)

The alternative was actually better than Wratten #87 filters, which were expensive, fragile, and tended to bleach under the light.

What we used instead was a tripack of ordinary theater-light filters, such as those made by Rosco. These filters are used in front of a

1000-watt lamp, and only ~4% of that is visible light. Of necsssity, all theater-light filters pass infrared, to avoid combustion.

So, what one does is to stack three complementary filters, such that all visible light is blocked, allowing only infrared to pass.

What you want are generically called "plastic gels" in the stage lighting trade, and are made of dyed plastic film, not gelatin. The Rosco product is "Roscolux". I don't recall the exact colors we used, but it wasn't hard to figure out. One just got (for $15) a sample book, and tried combinations out.

There are a number of competitors as well.

There are glass filters that pass IR and block visible, probably made by Schott and perhaps Hoya, but these were too expensive for us. Theater filters are something like $6 for a 20" by 24" sheet, and widely available.

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Eric R Snow
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It is certainly possible, but it takes a lot of LEDs, since each puts out only a milliwatt or so of light energy. It is often more practical to cover a large incandescent lamp (250 watt brood lamps, for example) with an IR long pass filter when a big flood is needed. Most theatrical color filter gels pass IR, so using a few different deep colors, like blue and red, block most visible, but pass IR. These are fairly cheap in large sizes.

Reply to
John Popelish

Hello,

I hope this is the right place to post this message as I wish to know is it possible to make an infra-red flood light using LEDs.

I recently purchased what I thought was one form maplins for 60 GBP but it turned out to be more of a spotlight, lighting up only a small area of

my drive., I want to know would it be possible to make a light that could cover a wider area using i/r led's, possibly the ones you can buy for

maplins for a couple of pence each.

I'm sorry if I have posted this in the wrong place, but any advice would be gladly received

Thanks in advance

Reply to
john Smith

If you call your local Rosco dealer you can get a "Roscolux" sample book sent to you for nothing if you are in the "trade" (wink, wink). The book is quite cool as each film has a graph of its transmission vrs wavelength. You can pick the wavelengths you want passed by stacking up the graphs. I made a nice homemade safelight doing this. Also Bill Beaty also did some cool research at:

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He used: " "Congo Blue" (Lee #181, or Rosco #382) costs maybe $8 for

24" sheet Optional: sheet of "Primary Red" filter gel (Lee #106 or Rosco #27)" and made a pair of goggles for viewing IR. Richard
Reply to
spudnuty

Well, LEDs generally have a fairly narrow beam too, so you'd need a bunch of them in an array all aimed a little differently. And you'd need a bunch of them to give any reasonable level of illumination.

Or, you could find some kind of IR transparent diffuser, like you see on headlights or LV yard lights, to spread out the beam, or look for a "full-page magnifier" (in an office-supplies store, or on-line), and if it's IR transparent, it should spread the beam also, albeit possibly not as evenly as an actual diffuser.

Good Luck! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

Going back to my lighting days, I recall that deep blue filters in front of high wattage lamps used to 'char' from the absorbed energy !

Graham

Reply to
Pooh Bear

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