Anyone know of any individual LED group buys?

[number1gsxxr]

Oh very cool.

 

[DoctaQ]

any updates on this?

 

[phalanx]

I got the LEDs, stars, and heat sinks from Alex this weekend. I mounted a single blue and a single white last night just to make sure my reflow method worked. I did it with a bottle of rosin flux, thin rosin cored solder, and a crème brûlée torch. The results were very good but I will most likely pick up a no-clean flux pen in place of the rosin flux. I had forgotten how small the Rebels are.

First picture is a single Royal Blue at about 700mA.
Second picture is a single Cool White at about 700mA.
Third picture is both running at about 350mA each.

You can tell my blackberry doesn't like intense point sources of light.

 

[phalanx]

The final array will have 50 royal blues and 50 whites.

 

[number1gsxxr]

I can't wait. I think it's going to end up awesome!

 

[DoctaQ]

neato.
i just got a new benchtop power supply with constant current mode yesterday, cant wait to play with it.

rosin core solder? no solder paste?

 

[phalanx]

Not for those. I don't have any on hand at the moment. All I do is heat the star with the torch and tin the pads using standard wire solder. Once it cools a bit, you brush on flux, place the LED on top of the tinned pads, and reflow it.

Solder paste is simply ground up solder mixed with flux so you can get the same results with my method but it takes some extra steps.

 

[phalanx]

Here is a little update. After being away on business for the past 2 weeks, I was able to sit down tonight and get all the LEDs mounted on their stars. Out of 104 total, only 1 royal blue didn't work.

Next step is to get the drivers prototyped and up and running.