LED Printed Circuit Boards
- Thread starter crn005
- Start date
nemosworld
Active member
you know they do make 3 up stars right?
look up ocean coral white. can't port link to site here.
i thought about trying to design my own pcb,, but one issue that comes up is soldering the leds, cree's have to be reflowed in an oven. or on a mini wave. i can do it at work, but not on a mass scale to share.
look up ocean coral white. can't port link to site here.
i thought about trying to design my own pcb,, but one issue that comes up is soldering the leds, cree's have to be reflowed in an oven. or on a mini wave. i can do it at work, but not on a mass scale to share.
3up stars are your best option.
MCPCB stand fr Metal Core Printed Circuit Board, and that's what you need. Steve's Leds sells custom designs, but there is a payment of $100 base, but only $0.22 for every custom aluminum star/board beyond that. Copper stars cost 10x as much, but it's worth it for the heat dissapation it provides. Depending on how big an array of leds you need, that might work. Be sure to keep a few millimeters between each led on the board when designing, and spring for copper.
I am currently developing some custom MCPCBs to sell on kickstarter with a combo of 12 Crees and 3 hyper violets on each. The violets are of dubious quality, but the Crees are some of the best available. It's a mere 35mm x 35mm, about 3x larger than a single star or 3up. The leds are soldered beforehand, but I might be able to do custom designs.
PM if you would like to know when my boards will be available.
MCPCB stand fr Metal Core Printed Circuit Board, and that's what you need. Steve's Leds sells custom designs, but there is a payment of $100 base, but only $0.22 for every custom aluminum star/board beyond that. Copper stars cost 10x as much, but it's worth it for the heat dissapation it provides. Depending on how big an array of leds you need, that might work. Be sure to keep a few millimeters between each led on the board when designing, and spring for copper.
I am currently developing some custom MCPCBs to sell on kickstarter with a combo of 12 Crees and 3 hyper violets on each. The violets are of dubious quality, but the Crees are some of the best available. It's a mere 35mm x 35mm, about 3x larger than a single star or 3up. The leds are soldered beforehand, but I might be able to do custom designs.
PM if you would like to know when my boards will be available.
nemosworld
Active member
Read your thread on the other site.
crn005
New member
Yeah I checked out those Ocean Coral Whites that you told me about. I really like where they're going with them. Are you able to control each individual diode or do they all run on the same channel? And who needs an oven?! We live in Houston. Just put them outside for 10-15 minutes!
And yeah, I saw a lot of the metal ones online from China. Only a few looked decent but they still weren't exactly what I was looking for. However, I think the industry is heading towards making LEDs more tightly grouped. It's the best way to eliminate the light rendition problems (disco-effect, banding, etc.) so hopefully we will see a wider variety soon.
The ones from Ocean Coral White are the ones nearest to your requirements. However, you have to see this from the point of view of the seller as well. The demand for individually controller diodes doesn't exist because no one in practical situations can go through so much pain to control LEDs. You can have a lot of channels that operate multiple LEDs. If absolutely necessary, you can have custom made PCB for your designs from internet vendors, they'll get the design approved from you, build it and then ship it to you.
crn005
New member
Just out of curiosity, how much do these designs run you? For instance, if I had say 24 diodes that I wanted on a PCB then would there be a charge for the initial design or is it something that they could customize one or two orders for me?
Btw, welcome to RC!!!
bdevillier
New member
You do know that Steve's LEDs sells 3 up boards where you can pick the color of all 3 LEDs right? Anything more than that is going to cost you a fortune to have made. You could contact Dave at nano box and buy his led clusters for about $60 if I remember correctly.
kaserpick
Keeping it Simple
I built this one:
It's my first prototype. Please excuse the sloppy soldered connectors. I'm changing the connectors to be reflowed. I'm much more confident in my abilities there.
I'm looking to order 100 PCB's with this design, except the new design has thicker traces as I'm only using 1oz of copper.
I'd show it over a tank, but my power supply fried my drivers. I'm still troubleshooting why.
The LEDs are as follows:
7 Cool White XP-E
13 Blue XP-E
13 Royal Blue XP-E
3 Amber XP-E
3 Red XP-E
3 Green XP-E
3 Cyan Rebels
45 3w LED's in all
It's my first prototype. Please excuse the sloppy soldered connectors. I'm changing the connectors to be reflowed. I'm much more confident in my abilities there.
I'm looking to order 100 PCB's with this design, except the new design has thicker traces as I'm only using 1oz of copper.I'd show it over a tank, but my power supply fried my drivers. I'm still troubleshooting why.
The LEDs are as follows:
7 Cool White XP-E
13 Blue XP-E
13 Royal Blue XP-E
3 Amber XP-E
3 Red XP-E
3 Green XP-E
3 Cyan Rebels
45 3w LED's in all
kaserpick
Keeping it Simple
No build thread. I didn't take any progress pics. Lame, huh?
I bought the board and etched it. Once I saw it lit, I tidied the design with better connectors and thicker traces. I'm trying to incorporate some UV's, but since the semiLEDs UV's have the same footprint as the Cree Xlamps, I won't need to change much to include them.
Once the final design is done, I'm going to order 100 of them (just the PCB's). Reflowing the LED's is time consuming, but not very difficult.
I bought the board and etched it. Once I saw it lit, I tidied the design with better connectors and thicker traces. I'm trying to incorporate some UV's, but since the semiLEDs UV's have the same footprint as the Cree Xlamps, I won't need to change much to include them.
Once the final design is done, I'm going to order 100 of them (just the PCB's). Reflowing the LED's is time consuming, but not very difficult.
kaserpick
Keeping it Simple
Right now, the plan is to utilize a fixture to direct all the light into the tank. I'm in the middle of designing that, no prototype, yet. I'm trying to design it in such a way that it spreads light evenly, without a hotspot or extreme point source.
The ultimate goal is this: Even light distribution to minimize shadows and color banding. I want it to be very difficult to tell it apart from a Metal Halide. That seems to be a popular desire.
The LED board will have the power; I just just need the vehicle to deliver it. I need to run the board for a while to see if my heat sink and fan setup will keep the temp down. Before I start testing, I'm going to tweak the design and build one with 6 channels to include the UV's. I'm really looking forward to those. If the heat can be managed on such a tight cluster of 45 LED's, then I'll order the boards.
The ultimate goal is this: Even light distribution to minimize shadows and color banding. I want it to be very difficult to tell it apart from a Metal Halide. That seems to be a popular desire.
The LED board will have the power; I just just need the vehicle to deliver it. I need to run the board for a while to see if my heat sink and fan setup will keep the temp down. Before I start testing, I'm going to tweak the design and build one with 6 channels to include the UV's. I'm really looking forward to those. If the heat can be managed on such a tight cluster of 45 LED's, then I'll order the boards.
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