Luxeon Lead

Has anyone had one of their leads break off on a luxeon, like when removing the emitter from the base (which I wasn't even doing). Not only that, it is a 5W! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

yes i've done that plenty of times, its fixable if your decent at soldering. I filed down some of the black plastic touching the the remaining of the leads, and soldered 30ga wire to it.

The small metal pieces indicating the polarity of the lead are actually the opposite-polarity leads---ie, the one with a hole is (-) and the one with half-hole is (+). You can just solder wires to those.

I have found the opposite for white 1W and 5W. The adjacient tabs (as used for polarity marking) have been the same polarity as their adjacient terminals. I have been soldering to both for robustness.

Larry

I had broke one before and i left with nothing but the emitter. No leads spared for me to solder to. What i did was i am trying to melt the plactic surrounding the inner lead (not recommended, risk of breaking your solder and others) so that i can get some lead that i can solder wires onto. I was somewhat succesful. Somewhat because you cannot move the wires soldered as freely. The connection was so fragile. If you choose to follow this path, make sure you melt the plastic a lot more so you have more lead to solder to. Else, using a Powerglue also works, even though not as effective. Ohhhh, a five watter? Man! that is really sad. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Thanks, it seems like I can get a small gauge wire onto the top or bottom of it with no problem. I need to get a smaller iron for these kindsa things.

yes, it's happened quite a few times.

it is much easier to deal with when it happens to the positive side, because it has more of a tab to work with.

A sharp iron tip is a must for this kind of stuff. You'll wonder how you ever survived without one once you get one. I used to melt all kinds of stuff with my big ugly iron before I saw the light. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I agree that both tabs should be soldered to for a robust connection. I don't trust those little tabs by themselves anymore.