the led on a budget

[deadrock]

Ok so as you know I was trying to go led on a budget, after wieghing out everything I decided to go with 3w led's (mainly because I was un able to order the one I wanted) but now I am going with a much wider spectrum of led's . Now I have observed the the biggist down fall of led's is that people think cw and rb hold a wide enough spectrum to sustain life. I am mixing the spectrum so I can obtain a halide or t5 spetrum . First everything will be on one driver but I will soon fix that issue. I am trieing to keep this project under 200 bucks but we will see

Heat sink was purchased from rapid led and everything else was purchased from ledgroupbuy.com, shipping was fast and staff was very helpfull.

Heatsink with splash gaurd 28$
Inventronics 40w 700ma driver 37$
6x white led 4500k 12$
6x royal blue 455nm 12$
2x deep red 660nm 6$
2x turqoise 495nm 5$
2x true violet 420nm 5$
1x 10k potentiometer 3$
Arctic alumina thermal adhesive 5g 7$
13.50$ for shipping
Cpu cooling fan(I already had lying around) 20$* not included in overall cost*

I am only useing 15 of the led's . I will be useing all 6 of the rb and all 6 of the nw then 1 of each on the tuqouise red and violet. The driver I am useing is best suited to wire the led's in series, atleast that's what I am told.
Also I went with the neutral white because of how much wider the spectrum is over the ever so popular "cool white"

Total cost so far=128$

 

[Zooid]

cool....can't wait to see the results

 

[deadrock]

Ok so I got everything today , weeeeeeeeeeee lol
I've gotten all led's glued to the heat sink now its solder time.
But I seem to be haveing some trouble getting the solder to stick to the led??? Any ideas,I've done a lot of soldering in the past this isn't normal to have this much trouble

 

[KhensuRa]

Are you tinning the pads?

 

[ailachami]

heat up the solder pad on the led for a minute. then when you melt solder onto it, it will spread to cover the pad.

 

[deadrock]

Tinning the pad? And I've tried evry thing lol

 

[deadrock]

Ok so the advise helped a ton I was worried about buning the led so I didn't hold it long enough

 

[ailachami]

glad it help. make sure you dont get solder outside the pad, which will ground the led. had that happened to me and have to re soldered everything. much harder the second time with the optics glued on.

 

[deadrock]

See

 

[deadrock]

All done with the led's . That's a lot harder to solder than wire to wire (which is what I'm used to) . Now off to install the pot and plug er in

 

[deadrock]

Ah it works I'm so relieved lol. Jerads 1 led 0

 

[deadrock]

Ok so it seems there is something wrong with the pot, it has a bad conection or something?. It flashes bright, I checked all of the connections. I think I got a faulty pot

 

[Zooid]

What kind of drivers and leds are you using?

 

[deadrock]

Bridgelux and the driver is inventronics

 

[Zooid]

what's the part number for the inventronics?
did you buy from one place.
sorry for all the questions, I'm trying to figure out if the inventronics can handle 15 bridgelux leds. I'm thinking
you may be overloading the driver. I could be wrong but I'd like to make sure.

 

[Zooid]

oops sorry didn't see the first post LOL

 

[Zooid]

Ok......the voltage drops across a 10000K 3W Bridgelux at 700mA is 3.7V. I'm assuming the other colors will be similar.
3.7V * 15 = 55.5V
So your driver must be able to drive up to 55.5V.
The 40W Inventronics driver that I'm guessing you bought
http://www.inventronics-co.com/uploads/2012_2_1513424.pdf

outputs a maximum of 48V. My suggestion would be to try driving 12 LED's instead of 15.
Needless to say I may be wrong but I've seen this type of problem before.

 

[deadrock]

It only flashes when I touch the pot , now that I have it mounted its ok. It would flash brite any time it was moved that's why I thought it was a connection issue but I resolderd everything lol

 

[deadrock]

I didn't do the math btw lol I assumed my information from ledgb was correct ,that's what I get for not thinkin.

 

[deadrock]

One picture is with the unit at 50% the other is at 80-90% . this thing is brighter than the 150w hqi at 50% I'm super exited the color is perfect , you can tell it has some red in it almost a hint of fiji pink t5 . Very nice