Under the Counter MX-3 LED lighting :)

[mds82]

At work i have a 6 foot desk with a top piece on it. The lighting in the room sucks so i decided to build myself a led light strip to light up the whole place. materials:
2 x 3-foot L shaped aluminum from home depot
12 x 5000k MX-3 LED's from Digikey
12 x brass tabs to reflow LED's to
2 x 3023-d-n-700 buckpuck drivers from ledsupply.com
1 x 12v power brick - had this around the house
wire, and a small switch

the LED's are wires with 2 parallel and 3 in series, so that each LED gets 350ma. I will be installing these tomorrow and will post pictures oh how bright they are. total brightness should be around 1200 lumen

 

[kethd]

Thanks for the pics!

But, are you really mounting on brass, with only one-third the thermal conductivity of copper -- why? How are you then mounting to the AL? And how are you doing the reflowing?

You just solder the wires freely to the LED contacts? Any problems, precautions, suggestions?

 

[mds82]

Thanks for the pics!

But, are you really mounting on brass, with only one-third the thermal conductivity of copper -- why? How are you then mounting to the AL? And how are you doing the reflowing?

You just solder the wires freely to the LED contacts? Any problems, precautions, suggestions?

I only had brass tabs, not copper, so thats all i had to use. I have been using these elsewhere in my house for 1year+ and never had a problem

gluing them to the aluminum using arctic silver epoxy. well this time i ran out, so just used some JB-Kwik making sure it was put on thin because its not the best thermal conductor

Relow is done with a toaster over and some solder paste that i have. just put a few drops of solder paste on, drop the LED on top, and then stick it in the oven on high till it melts.

And yes, just soldering the wired directly to the contacts, no problems. Just dont pull too hard or you could break the led in half

 

[mds82]

Well the office lighting is an odd color, maybe around a 2500k-3000k color, so the 5000k LED's look blueish compared to the lighting in the room. Here are 2 pictures. they were taken witn my camera phone so they are not the best quality. also the brightness is different in the 2 of them