Hello all, I am new around here.
I am trying to build a custom light for a particular application. I have got myself one of these from Ebay. All I want from it is the enclosure; I have taken out the little LED and driver PCB inside it and I want to roll my own replacement to install inside.
The LEDs I want to use come in a rather awkward SMT package, as most of them do nowadays. My plan is to design my own PCB for the LEDs, but I am wondering what is the best way to heatsink these things. If I make a double-sided PCB then I'm thinking that my best bet is to try to transfer the heat from the LED's SMT footprint to the copper plane on the bottom-side of the PCB using lots of small vias (which is a standard heatsinking practice that I have seen used with power FETs). I would then find a suitable heatsink to contact with the bottom side of the PCB to conduct the heat away. I've never attempted this sort of design before, and I wonder if anyone here has useful advice in this regard.
I can purchase the same kind of LED in a convenient "heatsink package", for want of a better phrase, like this one. My first idea was to use these, since the heatsinking method is already taken care of for me and all I have to do is bolt a suitable heatsink to the underside. The problem is they are physically too large in circumference - five of them would not fit together inside my enclosure. I am open with regard to enclosures, so I tried to find a larger one with a suitable torch head to accommodate 5 LEDs (or some similar number) in this package. But I couldn't find one about, so I abandoned this idea.
The package that these LEDs come in interests me, though. It's not simply a regular PCB with an LED fitted, the package is a kind of thick aluminium piece with what looks like a very thin top layer PCB for the tracks.
This is obviously the optimum way to provide heatsinking. But how does it work? And if I wanted to do something similar with my own PCB, how could I achieve it?
Thanks in advance for any advice that is offered.
Cheers,
bh4017.
I am trying to build a custom light for a particular application. I have got myself one of these from Ebay. All I want from it is the enclosure; I have taken out the little LED and driver PCB inside it and I want to roll my own replacement to install inside.
The LEDs I want to use come in a rather awkward SMT package, as most of them do nowadays. My plan is to design my own PCB for the LEDs, but I am wondering what is the best way to heatsink these things. If I make a double-sided PCB then I'm thinking that my best bet is to try to transfer the heat from the LED's SMT footprint to the copper plane on the bottom-side of the PCB using lots of small vias (which is a standard heatsinking practice that I have seen used with power FETs). I would then find a suitable heatsink to contact with the bottom side of the PCB to conduct the heat away. I've never attempted this sort of design before, and I wonder if anyone here has useful advice in this regard.
I can purchase the same kind of LED in a convenient "heatsink package", for want of a better phrase, like this one. My first idea was to use these, since the heatsinking method is already taken care of for me and all I have to do is bolt a suitable heatsink to the underside. The problem is they are physically too large in circumference - five of them would not fit together inside my enclosure. I am open with regard to enclosures, so I tried to find a larger one with a suitable torch head to accommodate 5 LEDs (or some similar number) in this package. But I couldn't find one about, so I abandoned this idea.
The package that these LEDs come in interests me, though. It's not simply a regular PCB with an LED fitted, the package is a kind of thick aluminium piece with what looks like a very thin top layer PCB for the tracks.
This is obviously the optimum way to provide heatsinking. But how does it work? And if I wanted to do something similar with my own PCB, how could I achieve it?
Thanks in advance for any advice that is offered.
Cheers,
bh4017.