Yes, very good to see you here as well!TEKNIK wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2019 11:46 pmHi Buddy, good to see you are posting on here, steel does dissipate heat but not anywhere near as good as aluminum, you need a lot more surface area with steel, from memory it was 4X more to dissipate the same amount of heat. It's good if you are getting it for free though and have the room for it and can handle the extra weight. Fan cooled steel doesn't work too bad at heat dissipation.BuddyColas wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2019 10:28 pmI am always trying to build the light with the most photons and the least price.
I attached a photo of I light I recently built using steel studs from a lumber yard.
Not sure if they use steel studs in your part of the world, but they are cheap and quite effective as a "U-Channel" heat sink!
As leds get better they can handle higher junction temperatures also.
When I first started with leds you really didn't want to push them above 65° junction temperatures. Now days 85° is quite normal with some going upto 120°
We may get to the stage where heatsinks are not required at all one day, we can actually do without a heatsink on many strips already if they are driven soft, the copper traces provide enough to do the job. I tend to use extra copper in my strips for this reason although it does add to the cost of manufacturing
You are right on all points.
I just brought it up as some have do some improvising in their local...even using sheetrock corner beading.
Check out out bad steel is for conducting heat on this chart. In spite of the chart it actually works pretty good in practice...and even better with a fan blowing across the canopy.
"Pretty good" as measured by droop not a thermal-couple.
I have also used my gutted old T5 6-bulb light fixtures as heatsinks, and they work great...plenty of area.
I haven't figured how PM here just yet.