LED by the Crosses

Austin Thomas from Real Life Church in Mechanicsville, Maryland brings us this cool LED cross design.

From Austin: We used LED tape aluminum extrusions to construct the crosses which come with diffusers. LED tape was cut to length and put inside the extrusions. Nine 2x4s were used to build the main structure the crosses are hung by.

The crosses are actually not assembled together but both pieces are individually mounted in place via the brackets provided with the extrusions. The vertical bar of the cross uses the full length the extrusions come in (~3’ 3”) the horizontal was cut to about 2’ 1”. The vertical bars are mounted on the main 2x4s with a single bracket, while the horizontal bars are mounted on two square cut 2x4s on ether side of the main 2×4 using two brackets.

The square pieces were screwed on with a single screw allowing the horizontal bar’s rotation to be adjusted and made level. The vertical bars can also be adjusted as only one bracket was used. This allows for easy replacement should the LEDs fail on any single bar. They can also be squared up each week to insure the symmetry of the design stays intact throughout it’s run.

RGB wire was soldered to the led tape on each bar. Then using four 24ch dmx decoders each bar was connected to it’s own control channels allowing greater flexibility in light animations. QLC+ was used to drive the bars.

What I would have done differently:
Since LED tape can only be cut at specific sections I should have cut the LEDs first, and then cut the horizontal bar to that specific length. Because I did not do that, LEDs were hanging over the extrusions and outside of the diffusers. I fixed this by covering them up with heat shrink which worked well.

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