Salvaging a damaged MC-E

[Fallingwater]

I have a P60 module with a MC-E thermal-epoxied on the heatsink. I wanted to remove it from there to use it in another project, but whoever glued the base on the heatsink did a damn good job - it just wouldn't let go. So I tried unsoldering the emitter, but I couldn't grip the sides strongly enough without destroying the dome in case I slipped.
So I wedged a thin, small screwdriver under one of the angles of the LED, applied the soldering iron to the pins, pushed the screwdriver in, and...



...this happened. The angle gave, but the rest of the LED didn't; the broken plastic was pushed up into the dome and partially detached it from the LED, which resulted in a weird spiderweb pattern on the dies. I pushed the dome back and the spiderweb went away, but the dome is no longer attached securely and has caused the spiderweb pattern twice again already (it always goes away when I push on it).
The die closest to the broken angle is dead. I tried bridging the soldered joint to the stump of terminal that comes out from under the dies, but it won't light up - my guess is I broke the bond wires.

The other three dies work, and have suffered no apparent consequences from the mishap; even at medium-to-high power there was no colour drift or anything.

My question is: after the trauma it's received, is it reasonable to expect the three working dies to survive for a usefully long time if I epoxy the dome on the LED?
I won't be using this MC-E in the original project, but I could adapt it to something less critical. Three dies are still better than one...

Thanks.

 

[J_C]

No way to know the true damage, remaining thermal bond integrity and stress on die wires without a microscopic examination that's probably more trouble or cost than the LED is worth. So it might survive fine or might die later, depends on how much trouble you want to go to, if the use really isn't critical you could always power cycle it and run it for a few days to see if it continues working and any further degradation is noticed.

 

[Linger]

Probably fine. Don't make it your sole emitter on a trip to mars, but I'd definately use it.
If you tried to lift it up, you've probably reduced thermal connection between emitter slug and engine - forcing electrically non conductive thermal paste in / around that side will be helpful.

 

[Al Combs]

If you try to epoxy the dome back on, the epoxy might act as a lens causing artifacts in the beam. And the "spiders" might come back anyway. Just use it and see what happens. Like Linger said, don't go to Mars with it.

This is somewhat less than useful after the fact. It looks like it was reflowed onto the star, not epoxied. If you have an electric stove, you could hold the star on a burner set to low with a pliers. As soon as the sheen on the solder changes appearance, pull the LED off with a tweezer or small needle nose. A few inches above a candle might work as well, if a little harder to control.