Help with my education, please

lightningbug

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Apr 1, 2006
Messages
190
I bought a Luxeon light last month at the Fred Hall Tackle and Boat Show in Long Beach. The vendor sold it to me as a 1 watt Luxeon LED, and said it was one of his best sellers, highly reliable and bright.

It's not that bright in my opinion, but bright enough for most use, and surely brighter than any of my Maglites.

When turning it on, its dim. The longer its on, the brighter it gets-like a vaccum tube warming up. It acts like it has in-rush protection. Is this a regulated circuit?

The Luxeon is a tiny LED. It's about 1/32" high, and maybe an 1/8" diameter. It's mounted to a white ribbon like etching, that is mounted to an aluminum star. That assembly is "pressed" (just a snug fit) into an aluminum housing. Two wires emerge from the aluminum housing and are soldered to pads on the white ribbon-like etching. At the base of the housing is a Green circular PC board pressed in. Once the star assembly is lifted, I can see inside the housing, and there are a few wires and some components stuffed inside. At least one that I can see, for sure is not a surface mount; it's full size, but I can't tell what it is. I've noticed once its "warmed up", I can power it down, and if picked back up within a couple of minutes and repowered, its still at maximum brightness. Perhaps the full size component I can see is a capacitor?

Educate me on what this is, and why an LED has a warm up. Also, is there a chance this LED might be upgraded to something brighter? I might add that the battery life seems very very good. I use rechargeable 950mah AAA in it, and have only swapped the batteries once in a month with an average10-15 minutes of use per day.

Thanks for all the information I've garnered from this site thusfar, you guys/gals are a great source of information.
 
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ACMarina

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Sep 10, 2004
Messages
3,119
Location
Brookston, IN
Welcome to the CPF!!

IT'd be hard to tell much about the light - is there any way you can see the bottom of the star?? If it's a real luxeon star, there should be some printing on there that we could interpret for you.. Maybe a picture? A description of the flashlight itself??
 

lightningbug

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Apr 1, 2006
Messages
190
It's not a luxeon star. But, If I can disassemble and get some pics, I'll post them.

Thanks







 
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tvodrd

*Flashaholic* ,
Joined
Dec 13, 2002
Messages
4,987
Location
Hawthorne, NV
From the pics, that's not a Lumileds Luxeon Star LED. I was at a gunshow a week ago in C.M. and a seller had a bunch of "Luxeon" LED lights. One look in the muzzle and it was obvious they weren't. Oh, welcome to CPF!

Larry
 
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