Testing of PhotonFanatic's LED's ... (testing emiters)

Thanks to Fred (PhotonFanatic), I have several new LED's to test on my Light Box . These are the same LED's that Fred sells here in the forums. I want to really thank Fred for making these LED's available for testing so that all of us can have new/recent data on how these LED's compare to each other in terms of vf vs. intensity and vs. drive level.

To make things more interesting, and since the initial idea was to allow easy change of drivers for testing LED's at various levels, in addition to the Downboy 750mA (constant current converter) that I used in my earlier data gathering, I built a second converter with 500mA. I captured the LED data with both, so you will see the measured vf and intensity change with each driver.










Although I am not done testing all of the LED's that Fred sent for measurement, I finished enough of them to make this post and share the initial data:


Note on the table above that as expected, when the drive level increases, the output increases but the efficiency suffers - the LED's put out more light per watt at 500mA than at 750mA

In my prior tests (and again here) the 1W "R" & "S" bins along with the 3W "U" bins had the best intensity/power, but look at the 5W "cyan" -> it kicks butt in the intensity and in the intensity/power departments :rock:

I will post additional data hopefully by this weekend

Will

Re: Testing of PhotonFanatic's LED's ...

Here are some color shots. Sorry about them being blurry - this were handheld with manual exposure (1/10, F5.6). I will try to use a tripod next time. Also, I still have the Rebel XT on auto-white mode, which I might need to fix in order for the camera not to auto-adjust to the different colors too much:

WHITE - 1W



WHITE - 3W



Royal Blue - 5W



CYAN - 5W



Blue - 1W



Royal Blue - 3W



Hope you like these

Will

Re: Testing of PhotonFanatic's LED's ... (with photos)

Hope you like these

Click to expand...

I do, especially the colored shots. Nice to be able to see the colors without being blinded for hours. :lolsign:

Re: Testing of PhotonFanatic's LED's ... (with photos)

Nice and clean test rig!

Re: Testing of PhotonFanatic's LED's ... (with photos)

Thank you guys

Although the photos were taken on a shaky hand, the exposures are all the same, so you can see which ones are brighter. Isn't that CYAN impresive?

Will

Re: Testing of PhotonFanatic's LED's ... (with photos)

Wow, thats one hell of a neat setup you have there!
Excellent work !

Re: Testing of PhotonFanatic's LED's ... (with photos)

It's time to get a cheapo tripod...

Looks great! Thanks fer the time and info!

Re: Testing of PhotonFanatic's LED's ... (with photos)

wquiles said:

Thank you guys

Although the photos were taken on a shaky hand, the exposures are all the same, so you can see which ones are brighter. Isn't that CYAN impresive?

Will

Click to expand...

I just cut-down a 2c to a sub c size and dropped in a 1 watt cyan from Photonfanatic. Man this thing is BRIGHT! I'm driving it slightly higher than wanted at .900 mah. Why does it always seem that you get exactly the number your looking for on the bench then when all the parts go into the light they change!! Owe well .900 mah on a fresh 18650 (resistored)

Mac

Re: Testing of PhotonFanatic's LED's ... (with photos)

cmacclel said:

Man this thing is BRIGHT! I'm driving it slightly higher than wanted at .900 mah. Why does it always seem that you get exactly the number your looking for on the bench then when all the parts go into the light they change!!

Click to expand...

For direct drive, it makes perfect sense to me, as in the final circuit you have much, much shorter wires, unlike those with your multi-meter which you used to setup the system. So basically, it is brighter becuase there is less path resistance and therefore more current can flow to the LED. What you could do is to use a 5% or 10% higher resistor value to account for this in future builds

Will

I designed the setup to be able to test emiters, but I am testing bare emiters for the first time:



These are all of the emiters tested in this session:



and here are the results:



First aplly thermal goop to the heatsink and press the bare star in place:



then a small amount of goop for the emiter:



lightly press the emiter in place:



and clamp in place with the electrical contacts:



To test the setup, I used one of my own LED's:



here is the Vf at 750mA:



and the LBU (Light Box Units) reading:




and without the birds' house cover (with a tripod this time!):



when you are done, the emiter remains with some goop that has to be cleaned-up prior to future permanent bonding with AA expoxy:



Here is the brightest, most efficient LED that I have ever tested - the Red-Orange 3W:



here is the vf at 750mA:



and the very high reading !!!:






Another pretty one was the 1W CYAN LED:






and lastly, a real, not-slideware, K2 emiter:





vf at 750mA:



although this early sample was not super bright:



Hope this was interesting

Will

Nice...

Need I say more . . . ?

Cheers !

Thank you sir

It takes lots of time, due to the several steps needed for each emiter/star, but it is very satisfying work

One of the best things is that the setup is incredibly stable and repetitive. I have a standard 3W LED that I use at the beguining of each session, and I get an LBU value of 280 +/- 1, for the 3 separate times I have taken measurements over a 2-3 month time period - this is simply beyond my expectations !!!

Will

Nice work Will. That is a lot of testing, and very good data.

NICE JOB!!!

Thank you guys

I still have more LED's to test, but this is certainly a good start

Will

Incredible work!!!! Five stars*****

Any chance of a S**H lux1 showing up on the graph anytime soon?

I do have some SW0H and SX0H that I got recently, so I will try to test and report on these in the next couple of weeks

Will

William, have you already found a "way" to convert LBU to Lumens ?

Keep up the good work. You've been quiet some time, what's new ?

Cheers !

Not yet. I still need to get my hands on an LED that has been tested to a specific Lumens value. So far no luck

Will