eLED Luxeon swap

I'm not sure how interested people will be interested in this, but here it is anyway.

I've owned a couple of these eLEDs. I couldn't figure out how to take the first one apart non-destructively so I ended up cutting it apart with a saw, and salvaging the circuit from it. But I really liked the form factor and regulation so I bought a new one.

The new one was kind of dim and had an ugly tint so I didn't use it much. One evening while messing around with it I found that I could pop the reflector off the eLED module. After that I was able to gently whittle away the epoxy from around the star with a knife and finally free it. It turns out the LED was an NX1K. Christoph was kind enough to give me another side emitter star (a PV1K) which I have now installed. Right now the star is held down by bits of hot glue, and the reflector is just loose. I am going to wait until I can find an R bin before I use a stronger more permanent glue.





I measured the current through the LED at about 196 mA. What's interesting is that my other, older circuit drives the same LED at only 127mA so I'm wondering if maybe UK changed it at some point.

Is there someplace that has pictures like this with little arrows pointing to the different parts and explaining exactly what each part is, like the chips, resistors and such? Just saying it's a circuit board seems pretty broad when trying understand it all. I checked the CPF Wiki, but I found nothing. Do I need to look harder?

You don't have to mess with the circuit board if you just want to change the LED. All you need to do is de-solder and then re-solder the wires. I don't know if anyone has analyzed the circuit or not. I decided not to take this one out because it wasn't necessary for changing the LED. My other one is encased in heat shrink tubing at the moment, but I could cut it out and take some photos if you want. They are pretty small though so it might be hard to figure out what's connected to what.

I guess it was the anaylsis of the circuit board I was thinking about. What makes one controlled circuit $50 and another one $150? I can see it'd be expensive when it comes to the progammable ones. Just looking at these pictures made me think about this. I printed them out and a guy here working the overnight shift with me and I were trying to figure out what each soldered point was, chip or resistor or what. Then I took apart my Dorcy 1W and was kind of surprised that it looked about the same, on top anyway, well, sortof. There are some obvious differences. Anyway, that's where I'm coming from. Just kind of thinking out loud I guess.