DIY LEDs - The write-up

[Jay1982]

Well, I seem to have a lot of techincal questions tonight. I finished my soldering of one string and want to fire it up and see if it works. I took apart of my DIY T5 fixtures and took the extension cord from it to use in conjuction with my meanwell. The meanwell 60-48P has 2 cords, on the data sheet it says the Brown is "AC/L" which I assume means live with the blue being "AC/N", for what I assume is neutral. So....my question is: on the power cord I have 3 wires, Green/Black/White. How do I wire this?

 

[TheFishMan65]

The green is ground. Big discussion a while back. You can either leave it unconnected or connect to your heat sink. The other two (black and white) go to the meanwell in any order.

 

[Jay1982]

Haha, yeah I actually re-read that part. I remember it co-incided with my first post in this thread. Anyways. I wired everything up and test ran it. It works perfectly. I turned the trimpot down too but I don't know what the reading was because my 9V died without me realizing it. So I'll have to do the adjustments tomorrow.

Also, how do I test to see if the heatsink has an electric charge from a wiring malfunction? I did a quick search but it turned up nothing.

I'm done for the night but I'm pretty happy that my soldering skills ended up working out, lol. I'll do the rest tomorrow.

 

[Taqpol]

Haha, yeah I actually re-read that part. I remember it co-incided with my first post in this thread. Anyways. I wired everything up and test ran it. It works perfectly. I turned the trimpot down too but I don't know what the reading was because my 9V died without me realizing it. So I'll have to do the adjustments tomorrow.

Also, how do I test to see if the heatsink has an electric charge from a wiring malfunction? I did a quick search but it turned up nothing.

I'm done for the night but I'm pretty happy that my soldering skills ended up working out, lol. I'll do the rest tomorrow.

When I tested for wiring faults that would ground the LED to the heatsink I would use my multimeter on ohms (resistance) mode and touch one probe to the wire and the other directly to the heatsink. Normally it would read "infinite" resistance, so if the mutlimeter showed any amount of resistance I figured something was wrong.

Make sure you're fingers aren't touching the leads while you do this because depending on the setting it may pick up a very large ohms number from passing the current through your body.

 

[hllywd]

So I continued soldering today and the rosin (yellow gunk) is exploding when I'm trying to soldering. Its splashing on my arms and on the dome of the dice. Why is it doing this?

Sounds like you used WAY too much!

 

[redhanded77]

Here is my little led fixture I made.

250 at the sand bed
400 middle of rocks
600-700 top of rocks

Needless to say, I was very impress with the light output! Camera doesn't catch the true lighting. Now I just have to save up to do the fixture for the above tank!

 

[skippyreef]

NIce job on that!!!

 

[F35-Joint Strike Fighter]

Forget about the problem you had before, kudo to your DIY skills. I wish mine could be that good.

 

[Jay1982]

Sounds like you used WAY too much!

Thats what I had assumed last night when I continued after the post I made an effort in using the least amount possible and sure enough it was still exploding. I even got some on the goggles I was using. I'm perplexed by this but non the less my soldering of the stars has improved dramatically since my first LED

 

[laverda]

Yes it is. It's the only other Meanwell besides the ELN that is dimmable that I could find. But the HLG's go uo to 240W.
So a resister affects voltage and not current(amps) is that correct?
Or is current watts? One minute I think I got it and the next minute I'm lost again.

George
I do not see in the specs that these are a dimmable driver. If they in fact are Dimmable, I might be interested in getting some for my 240. Perhaps we can go in together on them.
Another alternative might be http://www.thomasresearchproducts.co...2009-20-09.pdf Either the TRC-100S105DT or the TRC-100S175DT. I have no clue which would be better. Still trying to figure that out.

 

[laverda]

George
I am sure that driver is not dimming as there is no eletrical connection to control dimming.

 

[Jay1982]

This is another basic question. I was wondering if someone could help me interpret my readings from my multimeter.

I'm setting the multimeter to 10A, I place the red connector to the positive LED pad, and the com wire to the negative pad. It reads .513, so I turned the trimpot clockwise and then got a reading of .219. Am I doing something wrong? And is this stating that the current was 513mA and 219mA respectively?

 

[laverda]

These will be for my 240 measuring 96x24x24" The LEDs will be mounted on 5 roughly 8' long aluminum U channels with 3 strips of blues and 2 cool white strips. I am looking at having something like 140 LEDs, 78 rb XPEs and 52 cool white XPGs. I would like to obtain roughly a 14K look to my tank. I need to keep my total cost down as much as possible but in the long run I figure this should get me out of the tier 5 billing ($0.3191/KWH)
and recoup the costs in less then 2 years.

I have several tanks I am going to convert to LEDs. Since having a bunch of Meanwells in the house is a potential problem. I am looking at either using alternative drivers like those form Thomas Research Products. Then setting up multiple parallel strings on several drivers, using 2 matrix's or setting up Longer strings in parallel. Thomas Research has a lot of dimmable drivers. http://www.thomasresearchproducts.com/led_drivers.htm#120W Constant Current - 0-10V Dimmable - Long Life Series - 460,000H MTBF One nice thing about them is they have 10 volt DC power output, so it is easy to dim with a potentiometer. I plan to use my AquaController, but still handy for building and testing.

Does it make more sense to increase the voltage, so I can have longer strings (36-40 LEDS on one string)per driver? Or would it be better to increase the current, so I can have more parallel strings (4 strings of 13)?
Any and all ideas and feed back are welcome.

 

[laverda]

This is another basic question. I was wondering if someone could help me interpret my readings from my multimeter.

I'm setting the multimeter to 10A, I place the red connector to the positive LED pad, and the com wire to the negative pad. It reads .513, so I turned the trimpot clockwise and then got a reading of .219. Am I doing something wrong? And is this stating that the current was 513mA and 219mA respectively?

Jay
What setting do you have your meter set to? From the way you described your connections you are reading the voltage or the Vf of the LED.
To read the current you would have to have your meter in line with your leds. one lead of your meter to your power wire and the other lead to the LED. Thus routing the power through your meter. Make sure you have good conections befor you power up your driver and you meter is set to the AMP scale.

 

[dwl]

Are those Thomas drivers power factor corrected? The one I looked at showed an inrush current of 65A @ 230 volts.

 

[pheinzig]

When I drill and tap, is that enough to just screw the LED's in?
Or should I still use the thermal paste as well?

Of course thermal paste is never a bad idea, but if I find myself needing to replace a bulb...ouch!

PS,
My rapidLED.com kit didnt come with any instructions for the properway to wire/adjust the Meanwell drivers. Has this been covered in detail anywhere on this thread? or is there at least a PDF with instructions on how to do it?

 

[laverda]

Are those Thomas drivers power factor corrected? The one I looked at showed an inrush current of 65A @ 230 volts.

I do not know. I don't even know what that means or why I would want then Power factor corrected. Thats one reason I posted here. I want to make sure they are suitable drivers to use before ordering or planning on using them.
Edit: At the top of the page it says "Active Power Factor Correction - 96-99%" What does that mean to us/me?

 

[TheFishMan65]

Power supplies that are power factor corrected draw power through the complete sign (how is that spelled) wave rather than just above a certain point. IF they only draw at the high point they can draw a lot of current and multiple supplies may blow a fuse. Same sort of issue with inrush current. Multiple supplies turned on at the same time can blow a circuit breaker.

 

[laverda]

When I drill and tap, is that enough to just screw the LED's in?
Or should I still use the thermal paste as well?

Of course thermal paste is never a bad idea, but if I find myself needing to replace a bulb...ouch!

PS,
My rapidLED.com kit didnt come with any instructions for the properway to wire/adjust the Meanwell drivers. Has this been covered in detail anywhere on this thread? or is there at least a PDF with instructions on how to do it?

Thermal paste should always be used, it is different then thermal adhesive.
The instructions have been posted and I copied them to my note for future use. I am sorry I do not remember who originally posted them to give you credit. I am thinking it was kcress.

With a Constant Current driver, never turn it on before hooking it up.
When you turn it on Open circuited ( no Load ), it will turn up to it's maximum voltage trying to get to the target current. Then when you abruptly apply the load ( LED ) the LED sees the max voltage of the driver & POOF! Fried LEDs! Hook em up first then turn it on. SVR1 is used to adjust the max voltage

If you're using the ELN60-48 model, it's TOO POWERFUL at the max current setting. You MUST open it up and turn down the current trimpot (SVR2) BEFORE turning it on with LEDs attached. The best practice is probably to turn it down all the way, wire things up, turn the rig on, measure current, and adjust the pot upwards if needed.

Also, the ELN60-48 is commonly used with 12 LEDs. That's fine for the typical LEDs we're using. If you want fewer (or more, I guess) keep in mind that it's only spec'd to operate in constant current mode between 3 and 48 volts. So DON'T wire it to a single LED! Even if you have the trimpots turned all the way down. According to some specs, it can't operate in constant current for less than 24v, which is roughly 7 typical LEDs.

 

[laverda]

Power supplies that are power factor corrected draw power through the complete sign (how is that spelled) wave rather than just above a certain point. IF they only draw at the high point they can draw a lot of current and multiple supplies may blow a fuse. Same sort of issue with inrush current. Multiple supplies turned on at the same time can blow a circuit breaker.

That sounds like the issue I was was trying to avoid with having a bunch of Meanwells. Except I was told even, if they were turned on at seperate start times, with over laping times on, it could be a problem. Is Active Power Factor Correction - 96-99% good for our purposes?