Lamina BL-3000 RGB and the new Titan (with Pics)

I was very lucky to have picked up these 3 LED Arrays once I heard they were being discontinued, because within a couple months they vanished !! You can't get them anywhere anymore, and they were and still are the brightest color LED's in the world. Lamina replaced them with the Titan, which is a great device but has less than half the lumens. The Titan does look really cool, I'll say that :


In this macro photo you can see each separate die. It is interesting to see how the blue is a large squiggle and the red is a longer but thinner squiggle (the green you can't tell) :



The Lamina BL3000's are legendary. Few people ever owned them because they cost about $100 each. The Red redefined the word "extreme" . . . it took a max of 15 amps (many Home circuit breakers are rated at that amperage) and has a blinding output of over 2000 lumens.

Actually you can't look at any of them - even at 1/4 brightness. They swamp out my camera if I take a pic at anything more than 1/4 max. For example, I ran my blue at 50% max just for laughs - it blanketed the entire workbench with an intense "blue wash" :



These things run hot . . . and I mean HOT !! I am driving them with a RGB color-wash PWM circuit to cast color on the front of my house . . . similar to the way some downtown buildings are colored at night. Only the BL3000's could do the job. I had to use a gargantuan heat sink (at $100 bucks a pop and the fact that they are extinct . . . gotta keep them cool). I spaced them so that the heat from one does not add to the heat from the others. Here are the images, running at a low enough brightness to allow pictures without causing a complete washout:




By the way - here is the Heat Sink that Lamina selles and recommends - it is very expensive, however - and only supports one LED, which is why I used the aluminum block instead for this project:

Very cool. How do you equilize the LEDs' output relative to each other? Do you put a resistior in line then run the circuit? For example to get the blue down to the output of the green or the red down to the output of the blue or do you just run them all at full tilt.

-LT

Looks like a few of your blue dies are weak/burned out.

Dude! I was lucky enough to get an internship at Lamina!! All I have to say is, IT IS AWSOME! Im quite upset that it is over on the May 30th...

You guys should check out the new titan turbo's.. with good cooling you can run them above their rated amps (Im not saying how much.. but you can:nana .. I was running some TruColor today at 100C and the measured light output dropped in half.. I couldn't tell the difference by eye and it still lit up the room.. I love these things .

I'm going to try to see if they will let me make some custom titans with the newer cree dies:naughty:.. I should see at least 3600 lm if they all run at 200lm and over 5600 lm if they let me pack the boards full with the die.. well over 6000 lm is possible i guess.. I'll find out the limitations on packaging die tommorow..

I think the reason the light output is lower with the new titans is cost and the fact that they cannot use their old patented method of mounting the dies.. If you want some custom made titans or something be prepared to make an order of like 10,000 or so before they even consider it.. I don't think they are going to be making any changes on the titans anytime soon..
psss... a new style of heat sinks will be available to the public soon..

R33E8 said:

Dude! I was lucky enough to get an internship at Lamina!!

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Now that's a sweet deal.

-LT

lifeson99 said:

The FOP RGB Controller ( $25 )
(one button control for Color wash at 8 different speeds, or set it to any solid color). Uses PWM to pulse the LED's - this keeps the LED's much cooler than constant current !!​

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That's neat... I worked with BL2000's and was really pissed when they discontinued them, there's STILL nothing like their reds for power in a flat space.

Just how did you determine that PWM is better? PWM is actually relatively bad at heating them up. Like comparing 2A at 100% to 4A @ 50%, the 4A time requires more voltage but light output's a function of current and temp alone so the extra voltage is just extra heat. Unless I'm missing something here...

lasercrazy said:

Looks like a few of your blue dies are weak/burned out.

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They're in parallel, and he's got it turned down real low for the shot. He's just barely hit the thresholds and some haven't turned on yet.

Wow, just one word , WOW

I'd like to have such an Titan, pretty cool just to look at it and get lost in these cool emitters ;-)

In response to the question about equalizing the LED outputs . . .
There are a couple of ways I have used. You can use 3 POTS and adjust them until you get it right" and then measure their actual resistance with a meter, and then substitute in Power Resistors (roung up to the closest match). However, the currents are high so a standard POT will fry. You need a wirewound pot - those ones that take 10 turns to go from min to max resistance work well. But even those you could fry if you drive the LED's too hard. Here is a Pyramid I made using the same method except I used a BL4000 RGB (now extinct, but the new Atlas RGB is identical to the BL4000):



The safest and easiest way to customize your resistors is to have buy a set of various valued sandstone power resistors, and play with them until you get the setting right. Set the RGB controller to pure white, then swap in various resistors on the 3 colors until the actual output color is also pure white. The best way to "see" the color of the output is to bend a piece of paper in a half circle and tape it over the LED/s - or of you have a milky white sphere, use that. Here is the schematic:


If you end up with a nice white output using three higher values of resistance (for example: 47, 100, and 470 ohms - you should realize that will reduce your max brightness. You may want to do that to make sure you do not overdrive your LED's - however, it is hard to overdrive these LEDs with a 3-amp wall wart so long as you have a good heat sink, so instead I use low values as shown below. I played around with various lower valued resistors to get a nive white color . . . then tested the RGB fade to make sure all colors were coming in nicely, and then at the end I did the "fry test" to make sure I could set the voltage to 12vDC (the value of my WallWart) and that the heat of the resistors would not instantly sear my skin when quickly touched). Very hot is fine, but you don't want the resistors smoking hot. Or you can do it in a more exact way . . . measure the voltage drop "V" across the resistor and then calculater the power (where P = V*V / R), and make sure you are not exceeding the power rating of the resistor.

ls
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