Undercabinet lighting question

[mitaccio]

I am in the process of buying a home and want to add undercabinet lighting to the place. I have a MicroDrive9 and some Cree P4s. The cabinets are divided with two 19" on the left of the range hood (they are right next to each other, but are separate pieces) and a 25" on the right. I am trying to decide how many leds to do and at what amperage. I can do 350 or 700 mA. But if I do 700mA do I need to worry about heat? I am thinking of just placing the emitters on flat aluminum plate and mounting the plates to the cabinets as opposed to creating an enclosure to save money. Are there any disadvantages to not having an enclosure? Then, how many leds should I use and at what power?
Thanks in advance for helping a noob out.

 

[spencer]

I am pretty inexperienced but will try to answer your questions. I think you should be able to drive them at 700mA with them epoxied onto an aluminum plate with Arctic Alumina without worrying about heat. I read somewhere that you need 10 square inches of flat aluminum for every LED (not sure how accurate that is but it doesn't sound too wrong its almost a 3" x 3" piece). As for how many LEDs you want is up to you. A single P4 at 350mA is going to give you about 85 lumen so at 700mA maybe around 130 lumen. There should be no real disadvantages to not having them in an enclosure other then they are susceptible to damage.
Could you be more specific with what driver you're using. A google search revealed nothing.

Spencer

 

[Gunner12]

If McGizmo doesn't mind, I'd send him a PM/email. he has converted most of his house lights to LED(almost all of them).

Depending on how big the piece of Al is, it might have enough or it might not have enough heatsinking.

The enclosure will cut down some of the output but it will also protect the LED and diver. Depending on how high a chance of damaging the LED is, an enclosure might be needed or it might not be needed.

 

[SafetyBob]

Since you have a microdrive 9, try 350mA first. It will probably be bright enough....at least for general lighting.

I am currently using a microdrive 9 to power 4 Seoul P4's in two old halogen undercounter fixtures (like 10 inches long) I got from Lowes. My stars (didn't have emitters then) are epoxied to the very thin metal and is enclosed by glass after that. No heat problem at 700mA AND it is very bright. It lights up the desk in my kitchen a little to much, but better to much then to little or none at all.

My first experience was custom made aluminum round stock, cut in half about an inch and a quarter long with Cree Q5's epoxied on with optics I got from Brum in the Marketplace I believe. The optics are really, really cool and I would suggest you do NOT use the spot for your use, they make a dispersed one with like 25 degrees or more.....they really looked good on the kitchen desk project. I put it to the Crees with at least 1 full Amp going to them and used a Zane led dimmer to give me some control. The crees were just to blue for my liking. The Seouls were more of a warm white color and looked much, much better. Just be prepared that the Crees may not really give you the results you want......I would highly recommend you look for some warmer color ones than what you would normally find around here (that is unless you already did).

Make sure you check out McGizmo's house. I was trying to get to Hawaii to visit it in person, but the trip got cancelled.

Bob E.