LEDgardener

Greetings all,
Ok as you all are I'm bored a bit...... And I think I have an addiction to making LED lights.... better than opioids... So to keep my hands and mind busy I decided to make some of my own LED pcb stars . I want to make supplemental flowering bars to place around my other lights. I use HPS down middle of my room for heat and a little IR and the rest is LEDs in 3 or 35K along with two light bars l already made with 660 &730nm. I have noticed better bud structure I fell near them so I want to make more and I think add some 420-430nm and possibly some 27K or other suggestions people have. I have a perpetual garden so doing things like UV that need to be at certain times I probably will avoid.

So any tips you guys and gals have about good methods for reflowing them I'd love to hear. Even more so is good USA suppliers for the diodes and stars that are reputable but not sooooo taxed. For instance a single Cree far red diode on Digikey is only a dollar less than a finished one from Rapidled. I want to most likely use Cree, Osram or Nichia diodes. There must a be a decent place to score these. Thanks in advance ~~~ stay safe

Next step will be to try to reflow some strips in m convection oven ...heheh if I can find a good source for those too,

Although it's good to play around with things and learn how to do things at home such as rework and reflow your own leds it's not worth it most of the time.

Easier and often cheaper to buy from someone like rapid led.

One thing to be aware of when purchasing leds is the binning. The easiest way to over spend is to purchase the wrong bin and it is very easy to do. Make sure you get the forward voltage and flux bins correct. Often companies will sell a product cheaper than someone else but the bin is completely different.

Yeah I realize I probably won't save much if any money, but It will be a learning experience and keep my mind busy in this time of quarantine. That being said can you direct me to some other good sources for diodes that will be good? Is it the data sheets you can find the bin info ?

Yes, you need to go through the data sheets to find out about the bins. Flux bin is not enough of an indication, voltage bin matters too.
It depends on how fussy you want to get. Some data sheets are easier than others to read.
If you are in USA I guess rapid led would be the easiest choice

TEKNIK wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 29, 2020 11:08 pm

Yes, you need to go through the data sheets to find out about the bins. Flux bin is not enough of an indication, voltage bin matters too.
It depends on how fussy you want to get. Some data sheets are easier than others to read.
If you are in USA I guess rapid led would be the easiest choice

I don't see Rapidled selling single diodes - all theirs I see are on stars.

I thought they sold them separately, it maybe 6 years or so since I visited the website.
You can try arrow or digikey, mouser
Cutter has a range or horticultural leds that can be purchased separately I dont think the freight will be too bad.
You could buy the star boards from them too if you want to experiment.

Do you have solder paste?

You can get LEDs on a reel from Arrow, Digikey, Mouser, Future, etc... they'll also have the corresponding mounting stars (usually).

All you need is a hotplate (and paste).

This video from Cutter shows how easy it is. It's kinda foolproof (kinda).

I've been pretty bored too, so I recently made this fixture as stage lighting:
And I used this tape instead of paste to mount them to the heatsink.

Inexpensive and no mess. I like it.