papasan
Enlightened
got an amber lambertian luxeon star with the optics a couple days ago from Mark Hannah Surplus Electronics...quick shipping, packaged very well (wrapped 3 times in static resistant materials)...good transaction...
first thing that struck me was the size...it's smaller than i imagined it would be, smaller accross than a quarter...the optics seem to be glued onto these new ones, there was what looked like silver silicone at the base of the black plastic housing...i didn't try to pry it off...
after i got it fired up (being very careful to get the polarity correct and not jump the poles through the heatsink backing) the next thing i noticed was the color...amber just isn't for me i guess...i would probably classify this as more of a light orange color...more 'pure' than incandescent, but still not pleasing to my eye, i much prefer the 'moonlight' white of the nichia's...
running off of 2 fresh AAs (1.56v & 1.53v) after it was running i measured about 2.6v~2.7v...my fluke has 2 fused terminals for measuring amperage, a 10A hole and a 300mA hole...hooking it up to the 300mA read overload and hooking it up to the 10A sucked so much juice the LS went out...i don't have any precise low-R/hi-W resistors so i couldn't check that way either...so it was something over 300mA but not sure by how much...after about an hour of running it (still over 300mA draw) i took it apart...it was actually cold to the touch which indicates to me that it could be driven much harder...
brightness was somewhat dissapointing for a LED that's supposed to put out [email protected], it's hard to compare with other LEDs tho...the beam was very smooth, very 'clean'...a nice sized diamond shaped hot spot in the middle with decent roll-off (the optics are supposed to be 10 degrees, i think, but it seems a little wider)...it seemed about as bright as maybe 4~6 overdriven 5600s but much smoother in the beam...not too bad for being straight off of 2 AAs i suppose...perhaps i was just expecting too much as i've heard this compared to a LW4000 and an E1...
soon i'm going to put this into a double-barrel 4xAA, perhaps the 2 sets of batteries in parallel will beef up the beam a little...even better, perhaps as it gets more fully driven the color will brighten up...we shall see =)...
first thing that struck me was the size...it's smaller than i imagined it would be, smaller accross than a quarter...the optics seem to be glued onto these new ones, there was what looked like silver silicone at the base of the black plastic housing...i didn't try to pry it off...
after i got it fired up (being very careful to get the polarity correct and not jump the poles through the heatsink backing) the next thing i noticed was the color...amber just isn't for me i guess...i would probably classify this as more of a light orange color...more 'pure' than incandescent, but still not pleasing to my eye, i much prefer the 'moonlight' white of the nichia's...
running off of 2 fresh AAs (1.56v & 1.53v) after it was running i measured about 2.6v~2.7v...my fluke has 2 fused terminals for measuring amperage, a 10A hole and a 300mA hole...hooking it up to the 300mA read overload and hooking it up to the 10A sucked so much juice the LS went out...i don't have any precise low-R/hi-W resistors so i couldn't check that way either...so it was something over 300mA but not sure by how much...after about an hour of running it (still over 300mA draw) i took it apart...it was actually cold to the touch which indicates to me that it could be driven much harder...
brightness was somewhat dissapointing for a LED that's supposed to put out [email protected], it's hard to compare with other LEDs tho...the beam was very smooth, very 'clean'...a nice sized diamond shaped hot spot in the middle with decent roll-off (the optics are supposed to be 10 degrees, i think, but it seems a little wider)...it seemed about as bright as maybe 4~6 overdriven 5600s but much smoother in the beam...not too bad for being straight off of 2 AAs i suppose...perhaps i was just expecting too much as i've heard this compared to a LW4000 and an E1...
soon i'm going to put this into a double-barrel 4xAA, perhaps the 2 sets of batteries in parallel will beef up the beam a little...even better, perhaps as it gets more fully driven the color will brighten up...we shall see =)...