| Acree |
02-01-2014 01:41 AM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Superhatch
(Post 1496143)
While this looks amazing, the end of this line is my concern:
Even with the correct thermal management, what are we looking at for reduced life of these LEDs? Some, none? Any input you have would be appreciated prior to me setting out to make this change.
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I did all of my testing with an infrared thermometer directly onto the heatsink. (Full disclosure, the manufacturer recommends the use of a thermal probe near the thermal mounting pad of the LED, but I do not believe that is necessary in this application.)
I never saw temperatures over 60*C on the heatsink with them being on for an hour straight. Now, two caveats with this: 1) This is with an ambient temperature of 72*F or 22*C. 2) This leaves a temperature increase of 30*C at a minimum before I would even begin to worry about diminished LED life. Even in the direct sunlight on a 110*F Texas day, I don't believe the LEDs will ever get hot enough to worry about overheating or shortended life spans.
The main reason I made that statement was so people would be very conservative when trimming the heatsink. If you go ahead and chop off half of the fins, then the thermal resistance would be close to double of what it used to be. In other words, it would dissipate heat half as well. That's bad.
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