Paladin - Luxeon LEDs

[JBreeze]

I remember a thread about LEDs....here are some inexpensive 1 watt Luxeons.

The negatives are that you have to make your own heat sink, and the recommended adhesive is expensive for experimenting on a few LEDs. The emitter is "batwing".

Also, the voltage regulator designs on the internet seem to be designed for lower power LEDs.

http://www.tek-tite.com/src/product_info.php?id=2985

[paladin]

yup...thanks....I dug those up and actually have 2-3 dozen....

[Norman Bernstein]

I just did a driver design for these leds last year.... part of a PCR DNA analysis system.

[JBreeze]

So ya gonna post it?:D

(Only kidding....I was going to try to make some 12v boat trailer lights and reading lights for the skiff, but it seemed to be too complicated with the special heat sink adhesive and regulator,current limiter, etc).

[carioca1232001]

Googled-up 'LED drivers' and found a direct reference to these Luxeon-types made by Philips, which seem to be the ultimate word, at least for the time being.

The preferred and power-thrifty way would be to drive the Luxeon LED with a switching voltage-regulator modified to perform as a 350 mA constant current source.

A simpler way would be to rig up a transistor as a 350 mA constant-current source, with the drawback that it would dissipate some (12-3,5 Volts) x 350 mA (around 3 Watts), somewhat offsetting the Luxeon´s advantage over conventional incandescent lighting.

Seems best to wait till they start flogging Luxeon - plus driver and dimmer for 12 V DC operation - for a buck !

[LeeG]

their NavLite is a good setup more dinghies and kayaks.
Ok,,so what's the simplest voltage regulator for that Luxeon?

[JBreeze]

LeeG,

I hope you are not asking me!:D

I was planning to add a resistor and use regular epoxy to make a heat sink. Gave up when I couldn't figure out if I needed a 1/2 watt resistor or 1/4 watt and saw the price of "artic silver" or whatever the adhesive is called....

But I'm great with a soldering iron.....on copper foil stained glass!

Thanks for trying to help, carioca1232001, but some of us are as electronically inept as a sailor that doesn't know port from starboard.

I just thought the reference to the 1 watt cheepie might be useful for the pros.

[carioca1232001]

JBreeze,

I used to get a kick out of working out the nitty-gritty in days gone by, but not anymore......wooden boat restoration has taken its toll !

Here is a nice web site for you to get a hang of what it entails to wire up those cheapy LEDs:

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?nodeId=01624684490DEC1BBD

If you look at the pricing, the power-efficient drivers cost at least as much as the LEDs themselves....so just await your time and the integrated LED/Driver package will sell for a pittance !

[paladin]

unfortunately most of the "components" used as drivers etc are all surface mount so you need a pc board to put this stuff on......I have 6 different boards laid out at roughly 4X scale....for led's for the nav lights, a replacement for the anchor light, and 2 of the more popular interior lights, plus a basic board laid out so that anyone building a boat from the ground up and with a lathe or a router table can make custom lamps...all using the led's and from a direct 12 volt source.....I'm putting all this in a book that I'm working on...maybe 120-140 pages or so, gonna be paperback, with either a comb binding or three ring style so that it will lay flat in a shop...and have several projects inside and a few pages devoted to proper antenna and counterpoise installation....and such....suggestions are welcome....and the info on the led stuff will take 3-4 pages......

[carioca1232001]

Thanks, Paladin, for enlightening this discussion.

I wish more people - with a stack of 'hands-on' (been there, done that) experience in design, installation and operation of diverse systems relevant to boating - would publish their thoughts in a book.

Should serve as a reminder to those who routinely address the wide spectrum of subjects that encompass sharpening of wood-working tools, adjustment of hand-planes, fixing of cracked boards, identifying lumber types as well as the method of harvest etc.etc. etc.

You will be hard pressed to find this sort of first-hand experience in ANY book !

[StevenBauer]

Where can we sign up to buy this book? Put me down for one. :)

Steven

[paladin]

first copy...$14,625.00 just for you Steve.

[paladin]

sorta a little dark humor in the above post......
Yesterday morning I received a call from a former associate in Fairfax Virginia asking if I would please meet with him and another principle of a defense company....I agreed...in Annapolis...a couple hundred yards from the Amish Market so I went there early and cleaned up in a gallon of fresh squeezed orange juice, baked goods and some fresh butchered dead cow.........
Went to the meeting......They brought out a product that I immediately recognized as something that I designed (kept shut about it) and was asked if I could design something like this....I said "yes"....They asked "How Much".........and I mumbled for a minute..hemmed and hawed,,, finally one of them asked if I could do it for $10,000......so I asked well, maybe...how many.........
They said they would need at least 20 units, possibly 30 this year, but could I get them built this year......I said I can have them all in 60 days, maybe 30 if all the suppliers have stuff in stock......
I thought they were going to faint....
I built the original product for a guy in Fairfax, Va......I charged him 3500 a box, very fair price....took 1 day to assemble and test, parts cost less than 1000 bucks, reasonable profit.......the S.O.B. was selling them to another company for 12K..who was selling to the gov't at 14.5K..............................so now I'm gonna build them for 10k....and since it's a mature design I can make a few changes to make it better...and cheaper to produce........I may get a new boat this year yet......

[carioca1232001]

A friend of mine once did an audit on how much a high-tech electronics manufacturing concern reaps (minus tax) on an engineer´s toil, versus the corresponding outlay, including benefits and all.

You would not want to work for such a business, unless they ramped up your salary to at least half of what they make on you.......

[paladin]

I sorta worked in the defense electronics industry for about 25 years....the best annual salary I had was 120K........there were some months I made 1/3 to 1/2 that for a couple saturdays work while doodling in the basement.......and my clients were the very same people who was using the defense contractor...who were sending them to me.....
They kept the client...did all major contracts.....but they couldn't even write the paper for a little 50k job....wasn't cost effective. I would take a couple days off without pay so there was no conflict.......

[carioca1232001]

Good for you !

I had a colleague in the company who was so blessed the moment he bailed out to go solo.

A major supplier hauled him in to oversee and maintain a vast computer control system that our company had just purchased and put into operation - and which he had worked intensively on.

Puts in about 30 (thirty) hours per month to get 4 (four) times his previous take home pay. Some of his previous managers were simply not pleased to see him soar over their heads !

[paladin]

For maybe 20 years or so after getting out of the air force, I would get telephone calls via my mother from guys working the dew line or pine tree line.....in two years I had virtually memorized the serial numbers of the various equipments, schematics and parts lists...and had written most of the new test procedures........and it was all in my head.....and it was a gawdawful mess.....I STILL remember the manuals/parts numbers......and vacuum tube prefixes...and resister and klystron numbers.........guess that's why I have a fat head.....:D

[carioca1232001]

For maybe 20 years or so after getting out of the air force, I would get telephone calls via my mother from guys working the dew line or pine tree line.....in two years I had virtually memorized the serial numbers of the various equipments, schematics and parts lists...and had written most of the new test procedures........and it was all in my head.....and it was a gawdawful mess.....I STILL remember the manuals/parts numbers......and vacuum tube prefixes...and resister and klystron numbers.........guess that's why I have a fat head.....:D

No sooner had the dew-line got operational, an alarm was sounded as it detected an unidentified object arising from the horizon...... an ICBM perhaps ?.........another hypothesis that was cogitated was the moon.............................................. .........................................did you possess a large head then ? :D

Or was it the result of subsequent umpteen sessions of cramming...? :D

[paladin]

schematics are not a problem...but.....for instance if you understand the giv'ments methodology of numbering things.....for instance...if you wanted to do maintenance on a piece of equipment you would check manual 31R2-2TRC24-36......the 31R2 would indicate radio equipment, repair manual, equip, type TRC (transportable radio communications) model 24, 36 (field maintenance).......looking in the schematics you would find if there was no power output you would know that it's in the driver or power amplifier stage and would find that the tubes were 2CX150A, B, or C...or perhaps in later units G.....
Vacuum tubes have a NSN (national stock number) 5960-xx-xxxxx which would be 4CX would indicate a 4 element tube, ceramic base, part number 250 etc, series designation would also say sometimes who made it if it was a special tube.....a resistor would begin 5905-xx(wattage)-xxxx (value)....then you get into similar situation with JAN numbers (Joint Army Navy) using a similar standardized numbering system....then you get into klystrons...which had their own rules.....

[The Bigfella]

Chuck - these military rules weren't always what they needed to be from my understanding. My Masters thesis supervisor had, in a previous life, headed up a 1,500 man nuclear missile design team. The reason he got out - and headed to the Southern hemisphere was doubts about the rules and people's beliefs in those rules. He reckoned that the inflexibilities in the system (at the time) were such that there was about a 20% chance of them leading to - shall we say a mistake?

[paladin]

I didn't say it was perfect......but Eimac/eitel McCullough had their own weird way of doing things and giv'ment be damned...they had a lock on the production of 75KW klystrons so they did it their way...as did a lot of other folks....one of the problems was similar vacuum tubes..like the old 12AU7, 12AT7 and 12AX7....all the same tube....but they were graded..... the first was a low mu twin triode....the second was a medium mu twin triode and the last was a High mu twin triode....the ones that came off the assembly line with out of spec spacing of the internal works just didn't have as high a gain......and would not work in certain circuits......now Svetlana makes the things and their tolerances are tighter than RCA or Sylvania ever accomplished......I looked at some 6L6GT's ($3.00 each at one time) for my VOX guitar amplifier.....and Svetlana gets $250 for a matched pair.....

[The Bigfella]

Ahhh, ummm, Chuck - what language was that?

[paladin]

Uhhhh....which part?.....;)