FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

roarke wrote:Why use a sink cooler ?

I was afraid 3w led is very hot. They already come with this star shape heat sink plate. Not sure if additional is required



Sent from my SM-N9005

ok, I've been watching too much led experiment and COB and I think I might go crazy and try this out...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2YrQoZhAx0[/youtube]

Over the week. a few packages came and I am ready to build version 2

They do require a heatsink. One of them probably wouldnt get too hot but 12 puts off some heat. I have to order a couple more fans for mine.

Some update:
Blow my driver on my first test. I hot wired the input in reverse and it trip my home main circuit breaker, blowing the LED driver. :O

Dionae wrote:They do require a heatsink. One of them probably wouldnt get too hot but 12 puts off some heat. I have to order a couple more fans for mine.

I was suppose to test it out to see how hot it gets... but now i don't have the chance

Youll get it right next time.

Geez, I should not be wasting time and should just follow what others has written down

The driver came and all 12led work for a minute before they dimmed, Eric advise me to remove 1 led and it worked again and they went dim again, and 1 led got burnt, I remove that and 10 led work. And they went dim again.

My conclusion is the wooden piece should not be use to for LED. I think heat dissipation has an issue here. I will try to rectify by replacing the wooden piece with aluminium. IDK... Perhaps 900mA is too high and bright?


I would appreciate any advise/feedback




Just before they went dim 1st time.



Went dim and wont light back up until i remove 1 led

Can you post some pics of how you have the leds soldered together please?

Dionae wrote:Can you post some pics of how you have the leds soldered together please?

yes. they are soldered in series. the driver output + goes to the first led -. The last Led + goes to back to driver at -

i am otw to work. so i can only get more pica whwn I get hmm





Sent from my SM-N9005

You should have the output + to the last led + and the output - to the last led -;). You have the leds wired to the driver backwards.

Dionae wrote:You should have the output + to the last led + and the output - to the last led -;). You have the leds wired to the driver backwards.

yeah. correct. as the driver shows. the driver - goes to my led diode -. I complicate things when i said driver output + goes to led -. My bad. i was reading from the pcb board.

Either way, it wont light up if i reverse. So I wired correctly since they light up.

Sent from my SM-N9005

Im not sure what could be causing your problem then. Ive never had that happen.

i suspect it was heator a faulty capacitor in the board. i dont have time to check yesterday. will check again on the heat issue. i have ordered a 30x20cm heat sink and a new higher capacity driver. we'll see how.

Thanks Eric.

Sent from my SM-N9005

The stuff arrived really quickly after china resume sales after a week of lunar new year celebration.

The heat sink is really solid, exact to be the size of my tank cover. I've decided to go ahead with new batch of LEDs since the previous ones were abused.


Thermal silicon/compound for better heat transfer. I learn a experience here with heat dissipating situations, that you will have a very very hard time soldering the wires to the leds, since they dissipate heat so quickly. Perhaps it was better to solder the wires before securing the leds to the heat sink.


All in place, 4x3 6000k and 3000k range. Additional epoxy application to secure the leds.


Working as I anticipated the last time it failed was due to very poor heat dissipation. I left it alone for an hour and it's still working, but the heat build up really hot like my T5s. So I would need to add fans and test another day.