Soldering SMD LEDs

SMD, (Surface Mounted Devices) LEDs, love these little suckers, working with them, not so much. The good thing is that the price has come down and the brightness has gone up as compared to the recent past. The ones that I’ve ordered are only a buck and a half each and rated over 100 lumens.

Step 1 Commercially Available LED Bulbs

One day, I just felt like replacing some incandescent 194 bulbs with LED bulbs for my car. The picture shows 2 different commercially available ones. Both have decent light outputs, appears to be sufficient for side markers, license plate illuminators, and so forth. The flat one is cheap, just a couple of bucks works great in my license plate lights even though it doesn’t point directly down on my plates . Actually, it worked a little too well for my taste. I’m not exactly a fan of having attention grabbing illumination for my plates. The one on the right is a well designed replacement for the 194 bulb. The light distribution is probably the closest possible for any array of LEDs to approximate an incandescent 194 bulb. From what I was told, it’s made in Japan and soldiered by robot into these neat little buggers.

Anyway, with these commercially available ones that I already have, why bother putting together one from scratch. Well, I simply didn’t like the color. Yes, there are some offered in different color temperatures of white, but why not, I already mentioned they are cheap. I can sleep well experimenting with cheap stuff!

Comments

[Nerdz]

Those Specific LED's Need to be heat sinked better. 5 Months isnt a long time, their supposed to operate way beyond that. The Center thing is for a heatsink. Ive actually used the same ones you did, and despite what the data sheet says, dont run them at 150mA! 125 ma Is just as fine :)