Giant 100mm LED

Step 15 Mounting the LEDs

Mount the LEDs on a little strip of aluminum with some thermal glue. These LEDs can get fairly hot, and even hotter in solid resin, so we need as much cooling as possible (the heat will be fed along the tubes later), which is probably not enough as I should have. Make sure you orient them in an easy to solder in series format.

I've also included some pictures of 1 (just one!) LED on.

Comments

[Jarl]

You're using luxeons!! Run! ;) You'd get more light and less heat if you use a more efficient LED such as a cree, linked below (though I doubt it'll stay at $4.33, that's unusually cheap). A search for "cree LED" will bring up a wide variety, Q bins are better than P bins, at time of writing the R2 is the best bin available (most efficient), R3 and R4 are next up the ladder. Don't bother with MC-E's, they're more hassle than they're worth for this project IMO.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2395

[guyfrom7up]

These created a lot more heat then I thought they would (I thought they would run fairly cool, cause come on, they're LEDs) during test runs. Yet, between the contest deadlines and spending time with the family for holidays, I had to get the LEDs from the US (oppose to Hong Kong) because of shipping time (I only thought of this project about 1 and a half weeks before I had to leave for vacation). If time wasn't a factor I would have definitely gone with some better LEDs. So far I've had this thing on for about 2 hours on a time (with full brightness) and the aluminum rodsget somewhat warm (thanks to all of the thermal glue), but as far as I know the LEDs are fine. This will probably shorten their lifespan, but I don't think I'll ever have this light on for hundreds of thousands of hours ;) BTW I love dealextreme