What to use to power my LED's

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blk822822

It's only money, RIGHT?
Joined
Mar 28, 2010
Messages
813
Location
Black Diamond,Wa.
Ok I got some heat sink and used JB weld to attatch my led's. I am running 29 3w led's on a strip like a stunner strip. The specs on the led's are 3.2 to 3.5V and 700 ma. , they are small ebay ones but I'm just trying to add some actinic to my t5 setup. Now should I solder them in parallel or series? And what should I get for a power supply?
 
So JB weld is not the correct adhesive, it is not thermally conductive, which means that all of the heat will not be transferred to the heat sink.
 
go get some arctic silver from radio shack its like 7 dollars and more than enough. they sell both kinds 2 part adhesive and the silver gel used for computer processors.
 
go get some arctic silver from radio shack its like 7 dollars and more than enough. they sell both kinds 2 part adhesive and the silver gel used for computer processors.

I wouldn't count on that. I went to two RS stores in the north end looking for it and ended up borrowing some from TJL. Speaking of which, I better get some ordered.
 
Now i feel bad about this. Im the one who told Bill to use JB weld. Mind you there are so many diff products for JB weld and if its the correct one, then it should work. I remember using these for cpu's a long long time ago before the time of thermal adhesives. And im using it to 120 watt led build so far so good for the past several months.

Here is the specs of the black and red jb weld.
J-B Weld | Original Cold Weld Formula Steel Reinforced Epoxy

And here is the build page im talking about.
http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/f70/katchupoys-30g-cube-nano-65489/

The only difference is that jb weld sets longer unlike thermal adhesive sets in minutes.

Btw. As i have mentioned above if your in the south side...Frys electronics have a lot.

Hope this helps.

Cesar
 
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Also lets be very careful here... the RS i have only sells thermal paste which is not the adhesive type.... it should have the part a and b ones...... just to be clear....


To answer your question bill, you should have ordered the driver also together with the leds, because thry use constant current. And thats a lot of LED. Almost 116 volts of driver including headroom. So thats almost 3 meanwells with 48 volts each.

Next question is dimmable or not. If not then buy the LPC meanwells. If you want more excitement then buy the newest craze that can save you potential money... using the LDD drivers and a dedicated power supply.

If you want more details, let me know. I dont want to bore you with too much info.

Cesar
 
I know theres math to figure this out but can't think of it right now. You know Ohms law and all.. I have a motorola constant current power supply but it's 14v and 9.28 amps. Is there a way to power 3.2-3.5 volt 700ma leds with this???? I'm sure it's doable with the right resistors and the right number of leds......Come on you electrical ginions.....LOL O and it has a max output of 130 watts.
 
The amperage is what you need to manage, you would have to have nine parallel circuits of three LEDs with the right buffing resistor.
 
In parallel circuits the voltage remains the same across all legs, and the current is divided among the legs. So each leg will have the 14vdc and 1/9 of the current.
 
Also, I know that you are going to use the JB weld, and that Katchupoy has used it, but lets think about this a little, a thing of JB weld costs right around 7 dollars, and a thing of arctic silver costs 6 dollars, first it is cheaper, and secondly the thermal properties is more like a thermal resistor instead of a thermal conductor. So if you can get the right product for cheaper then why not just use the right product. If you look inside of your LED the crystal that is responsible for the light is connected electrically with extremely small wires, as the heat of your LED package goes up the life of the threads and the crystal goes down. Ultimately leading to the loss of longevity, additionally the color spectrum of your LED is highly dependent on the thermal transfer. So just something to think about when doing this.
 
well I'm not going to use the JB weld. I actually already had them glued on when everyone said it was the wrong stuff. But I was soldering my wires and they started to come off the jbweld, so I took a small pick and they all popped right off. So I'm going to get thethermal epoxy. And I'll just order the drivers from the place I got the leds from.
 
Ok ordered from Rapid LED 2 meanwell drivers and the thermal epoxy for $46......And Frys dosn't have the "Epoxy 2 part" thermal glue. Just the paste.
 
Ok I got my drivers today and the thermal adhesive and got the lights running. But I think I need better heat sink. After 15 minutes the heat sink was at 115 degrees.
 
115 degrees is hot, did you adjust the current output at all on the driver. If it is just for aesthetic reasons there is no reason for the driver to be at 100 percent. Dropping the current output, would drop your heat transfer.
 
I got meanwell led drivers and put two fans on the heat sink and now it runs at 80 degrees in a house at 70 degrees. Problemsolved.
 

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