LUXEON SunPlus 35

[Agent Green]

Thanks Jumper, I have been doing electronics as a hobby for about 5 years so got a bit of experience behind me. I would hold your amazement until the thing actually works xD Might just be an expensive paper weight.

At least your mistake will always remind you to double check the specifications. You can see the resistors I added on mine to limit the current. The voltage per string is going to be 36v - 28v (2.8v x 10 for the voltage drop across the LED's) and the resistor is 81 ohms so I = V/R 8/81 = 0.0987... it will limit the current to around 100mA and may save some LED's if the wrong driver is used. Should have added some diodes really for polarity protection but meh. They are 1W resistor dissipating 0.82W~

Invisible Sun say theirs are balancing resistors too, mine are not that fancy as I cba to test every LED's voltage and balance them. I think that's what they are doing anyway.

Been using a pottery kiln Gardro, temperature controlled with a thermocouple so does a pretty good job. No intention of starting any kind of business. I mean the idea floats around in my mind but seems like a lot of work, tried running a business before and I was no good at it. Sales is not my thing. Much better at going to work for a wage and doing shit like this for fun. Hey if it works I will share the files so others could do the same. We could all chip in an get say 100 thctalk boards fabricated completely

[Agent Green]

Took about 1.5 hours of a Joe Rogan podcast to paste and place the rest of the components


Got baked, got them baked. Too tired now to test anything. LED's light using the multimeter at least.
Little blurry...

[gardro]

Looking good and tidy that. Leds are diodes so you wont need any additional polarity protection

Resistors will limit the current well, make the lights more misuse proof but in the days of efficiency, i dont see them being acceptable anymore. For this diy its a good idea.

Top bin leds will always be perfectly matched. The best led lighting only uses these so i ask myself why only some manufacturers use them and others use resistors. Not to mention the wasted watts in the "balance" resistors

[Agent Green]

Haha yea I suppose they are, but not exactly intended for that function. You could probably still damage them with enough voltage in the wrong direction. I couldn't even find any bin info when buying these so got no idea what bin they are. The specifications were in the datasheet but nothing to find when buying them. If I really need to save power I could swap the resistors for a 0 link.

Well I tested the board this morning and 8/10 rows are lighting. Not bad for my first surface mount board. I can see a few suspect LED's in those two rows but not sure how to go about fixing. Do I just reflow the board again or try a preheat and heatgun. I am thinking preheat and heat gun as it's just one or two. Does say in the data sheet you can reflow 3 times.

[Agent Green]

So my dreams about an easy preheat followed by some LED wiggling were dashed this morning. Succeeded in burning two LED's before the solder even melted. Took the board up to 150c and used the hot air gun.

Might just have to go all the way to 240c and do some LED wiggling then. Good thing I got the 10 spares although they seem like tough cookies as the two I fucked still work. Not going to put them back on the board though.

Shit, it was all going so well. Hopefully my next try will be a success...

[Agent Green]

Decided to wait until the weekend for my next attempt. Two reflows later and a slightly burnt hand the board is now working

Next time I am going to put the extra effort in placing to make sure it works first time. Could try some of their other flavours on the other boards.

Hard to get a good picture. Might try with a different camera later.
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