TOPIC: LEDs

It would be good if Deep Red was added to SF's palette of colors.

Kouri wrote:
Thanks for the link! From what I've heard and seen, Cree seems to be the way to go. That site also explained binning and how colors can be slightly different in each batch pretty well. Perhaps that guy who was adamant he got blood orange and not red a while back got some red Crees that were closer to the red-orange spectrum, and his eyes where able to pick up on it.
And does overdriving (essentially) mean not using a resistor?
Execute66 wrote: Currently they aren't available in the newer Cree LED types SF uses, but I'd hope as soon as they are (or an equivalent is found) we would.

Just ordered enough stuff to make 3 LED modules... Probably gonna play around with them and write up a review/ DIY guide once they arrive. That includes regular red XP-E2's, Photo (Deep) Red XP-E's, and Amber XP-E2s, 3 unfrosted spot lenses, 3 heat sink modules/LED holders, a tube of thermal paste, 14 feet of wire, and 3 buck pucks.

Anything to keep in mind once they get here, Kouri? You have more experience than I do.

Jaden Korr wrote:
It means running LEDs at a higher-then-spec current. Using a weak/no resistor is one way to go about that. The more current you pump through an LED, the more heat it produces, and when LEDs pass a certain temp, they dim.

Warm-color Rebels are typically rated at 700mA, and previously, they'd dim above that current - but the latest revision seem to work fine at 1000mA on a good heatsink.

The Cree XP-E2 are all rated at 1000mA, but most will handle up to 1500mA if kept cool, and some blues, greens, and whites have been successfully pushed up to 2000mA.

I personally run my resistor calculations for 1000mA with a 3.7v battery, but I'm not afraid of rounding down with a Cree since I know it can take it. Also piece of mind for fresh batteries, since Li-Ion are actually ~4.2v straight off the charger.

Snakeeyz99 wrote:
Didn't specify if you bought single or Tri stars...

If you bought single stars, you may or may not need a lens holder to center the lens in the heatsink. I've only used their tri-stars heatsinks so far, so I don't know. Also, you did grab the dynamic heatsink/holder with the screw-in base, right? The other one needs to be epoxy'd shut.

Thermal paste should work fine, but I usually opt for the adhesive thermal sticker pads to keep the star stationary while screwing it in so I don't twist the wires off a contact.

Unfrosted spot lens should work fine. Each one shows its specs on different LEDs. The one that specifies 8.7° on Luxeon Rebels is the same as the 8.7° lens TCSS carries.

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Tri-specifics now.

The default Tris from LED Supply come with jumpers soldered to the star, making them serial by default, rather than parallel. This is no good for most saber builds. I've tried desoldering the jumpers whole without luck. I wound up taking needle-nose pliers and crushing the center ceramic (each jumper is basically a 0-ohm resistor). Afterward, the leftover pins are easy to desolder from the LED contacts.

If that sounds like too much work for an LED, you can spend a few extra to order a custom Tri Cree without jumpers.

http://www.ledsupply.com/leds/custom-3-up-cree-high-power-led

10° clear spot lens will work fine. I've got a frosted spot lens on-hand to see if it'll help with color mixing.

LEDSupply Tri-stars heatsink only has the one center hole. Enough room for 2-3 26ga wires or 4 28ga wires. You'll need to use scraps of wire to bridge the + and - terminals in parallel. Alternatively, opt for a 1" heatsink from TCSS or Solo's Hold with the 6 wire holes around the perimeter.

Buckpucks can be used with understanding. A 1000mA puck provides 1000mA total, not per LED. No issue for single stars, but you'll be limiting each LED in a tri-star to ~333mA. Funny enough, three LEDs at 333mA are a bit brighter than 1 LED at 1000mA, but if you're buying a tri-star, it's probably with the intention of running them all at full blast. The only way to do that with a buckpuck is to leave the serial jumpers on the tri-star and feed the puck with a 14.8v battery pack.

For a single Star, you'll want minimum 5v on a puck for PhotoRed, Red, RedOrange, and Amber. Green, Blue, RoyalBlue, and White will need a minimum 6v for max brightness on a puck.

All the modules I ordered are 3-up. For the two reds I bought all the pieces separately and am going to manually manually desolder the jumpers, wire them in parallel, then manually resistor the whole assembly to drive it. I purchased a bunch of resistors for that old red LED experiment I was going to attempt that should do the trick. Additionally, I have a spare SF LED heat sink/enclosure that I can use if I have too much difficulty with the LED Supply one.

The Buckpuck bit was a misunderstanding, but I won't mind having a few extra on hand in case I try out some one-ups later. You can never have too many spare electronics on hand.

The Amber LED I bought as a full assembly Dynamic LED Light Kit, mostly just to see how LED Supply intends the module to be set up or wired before I alter it to run in series.

Red wiring should be pretty straight forward with a lithium-ion battery - just a 1ohm resistor on each LED.

The nice thing about 1000mA LEDs is resistor calculations are a lot simpler - ohm and wattage calculations both wind up at (BatteryVoltage - LEDVoltage). I've probably mentioned this before, but I'll re-iterate since folks're using this thread for information.

We'll assume 3.7v lithium-ion for this build. 2.65v Red Cree LED.

ohm = 3.7v - 2.65v = 1.05ohm (We can easily round this down to a 1ohm resistor without worry)
W = 3.7v - 2.65v = 1.05W (In the case of wattage, you always want to purchase a bit higher to prevent component failure)

So the 1ohm 2W resistor at TCSS is perfect.

I would not recommend trying to run a TriLED off of AAA batteries. At least not Alkalines - they'd top out at about 1-1.5A, and your LED module would be asking for 3A. NiMH might fare better.

However, AA batteries would provide more current, and two 1.5v Alkalines can easily power any warm-colored Cree. 1.2v NiMH won't really have enough voltage without a third battery. 1.6v NiZN batteries are an option.

Photo Red = 2.5v at 1000mA
Red, RedOrange, and Amber = 2.65v at 1000mA

Just got a Cree XP-E2 Amber from a purchase last weekend. Color varies depending on power.

6v AAA power pack with the provided 2ohm resistor resulted in a very orange blade.

7.4v Lithium-Ion pack with 900mA LED Driver resulted in a more golden-yellow.

I've had similar variance in a Luxeon Rebel Cyan. Power would push it anywhere in between SF Cyan and Arctic Blue.

Also working on a shoto build with a one-up Luxeon Rebel Blue. Gives a nice Arctic Blue color without having to worry about color mixing. Have a Cree Blue I'll be experimenting with in a future build, but I'm told it's a little blue-er than its Rebel neighbor.

Also have a US Guardian Blue that I was expecting to be a Cree XP-E2 Blue or Royal Blue, but it wound up being an old LedEngin Royal-Blue-equivalent. I'll be doing some testing to see how far I can push it.

Mmm~ That's it off the top of my head.

One more little note in case anyone wants to experiment before I do: Cree does have a center-mount 12W RGBW Star in case anyone wants to toy with color-mixing and FoC:

http://www.ledsupply.com/leds/cree-xml-rgbw-star-led

And this is apparently the best lens for it:

http://www.ledsupply.com/led-optics/10193-carclo-lens-plain-tight-spot-led-optic

The individual LEDs aren't as bright as their XP-E2 cousins, but it has an advantage over a LedEngine RGBW in being able to run all LEDs at 1A each off a single lithium-ion. I don't think I'd recommend it over a 12W+ RGBA if you already have one of those, though.

Just got done experimenting with the 3W LedEngin Royal Blue. Thing's an absolute pain to solder to. Would never recommend it over a one-up Cree or Rebel.

Need help!!
Amber and Red = 12 watt color?
Medium Blue and Red=?
Yellow and red=?
Green and Red?

SuUpberSith wrote:
I'm assuming you're trying to mix two 6W colors in Hero saber.

A/A/R/R = SF Blood Orange
B/rB/R/R = Lavendar? (Blue and Red don't make as saturated a purple as Royal Blue and Red, so I'd recommend mixing a Deep Blue with Red if you want a strong Purple)
G/A/R/R = Orange
G/G/R/R = Orange (Yellow and Lime are possible if the power to Red is tuned down a fair amount)

Hey Guys/Gals,
What dies make up the Artic Blue LED? Is it just Blue and Green (or some variety of rB)? I thought the B, B, G, G make the Cyan LED.

Andi-Jae EL wrote: Arctic Blue=Rb/Rb/G/G

Deep Blue and Light Blue are the Non-mixed Blues.

Deep Blue=Rb/Rb/Rb/Rb
Light Blue=B/B/B/B
Medium Blue=B/B/Rb/Rb
Cyan=B/B/G/G

Whoa! I thought blue and green made Arctic Blue and royal blue and green made Cyan! It's the other way around?

Royal Blue sit at the very end of the visible spectrum putting out Blue and Violet light (Violet, in this case, being a color most would probably identify as Navy or Indigo).

Blue are a bit in the middle, offering Blue and a touch of Green light (to the point that some other brands, like Luxeon Rebel Blues, are almost Arctic without color-mixing). It's also why you don't want to use Blue LEDs when mixing Purple (Purple being a composite color of only Red and Blue with absolutely no Green).

Yes, double-post, but exciting update. Just got an email from LED Supply that Rebel Limes are now being stocked.

Also Cree XP-E2 are getting PC-Amber as an option.

Lime's a personal favorite of mine since it's the brightest single-color LED available and sits, visually, between Amber and Green.

PC-Amber should be neat, since it's tying with Green for the brightest color available in the XP-E2 line.

My ASP hilt needs to get here ASAP so I can do some color mixing.

(If anyone's wondering what makes these colors so special - remember the Photon Blade that takes Royal Blue LEDs and makes super-bright Lime Green blades? Same idea. PC Amber and Lime are Royal Blue LEDs with a phosphor coating to produce really bright light)

Kouri,
What type of LED are you going to use for your ASP? Are you using a SF 12W+ or something else (rebel or cree)? I emailed SF about a custom G, G, G, W LED but they said at this time they can't do any custom work. I thought that only applied to sabers but now I know it also means LEDs. They didn't say they couldn't do it. I am going to follow up and just make sure that when customs is up and running again I could put an order in. In your opinion is a rebel quad brighter than a tri-cree? I know we started this conversation in another thread but I never followed up. Thanks for your input. Anyone else can chime in as well. I like multiple view points.

I'll be going with a Tri Cree or Rebel, depending on whether I decide on an Amber/Green/RoyalBlue or Amber/Lime/RoyalBlue. Either way, goal is a Yellow blade with a white-ish FOC.

Last bit of research I did, Quad-Rebels weren't any brighter than Tri-Rebels, they just offered extra color mixing potential. Add to that that, aside from Royal Blue, the Cree XP-E2 are all brighter than their Rebel equivalents.

Quads do have their uses though. I've a Kylo Ren board I'm wiring up for a cracked-crystal Mace Windu. I'll be ordering a quadRebel rB/rB/R/R to mix a base purple with the last two blue and red shifting the hue in tune with the board's blade flicker. I would've loved to use a SF 12W+ Purple, but the way I'm wiring the board, I need individually addressable power contacts, and SF LEDs have a shared positive contact.

@Kouri, That sounds really cool! Getting Yellow to look right is a total pain, but if pulled off it works great

Kouri wrote: