Stupid luxeon questions

[NightShift]

Sorry i'm not at the board much and I haven't gotten into the mods and stuff as much as you guys have, but I have a stupid little question about driving a 1W white luxeon...

My old luxeon required like (1) 5-ohm resistor, and it drove it at about 350mA. The next luxeon batch I got, required not 1, then 2, then 3 resistors in parallel to get her up to 350mA, and after a while even that wasnt enough. So i just did away with the resistors altogether and direct drove it at about 500mA (I'm prolly killing the thing and don't know it huh)

Now I have a heatsink on this thing...is a luxeon safe driving it at whatever as long as its cool?

 

[Sean]

Originally posted by NightShift:
...is a luxeon safe driving it at whatever as long as its cool?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Basically, yes. If you can keep it cool enough you should be ok.

 

[Rothrandir]

the harder you drive it, the more heatsinking it will require. i run 1w whites direct drive in 3d mag's which is about 4.5v @ 700mA.