100W LED Chips - Any Experiences?

I'm tempted by the "100W" LED chips seen on eBay, and DX. But I'm suspicious. Anyone try one of these?

I don't know about those specifically, but some people have been using the higher-quality Bridge-Lux arrays which also come in neutral-white and high-cri options. You can also search for the Luminus CSM-360 LED, it is smaller and much more expensive, but it consumes the same amount of power (90W).

Heres somebody, who moddded a a maglite with a similar led from the company "Citizen",

Good info - Thanks. I was especially curious about the ones that DealExtreme has, and similar ones on eBay. They're really inexpensive. No doubt - they have issues, though....

brickbat said:

I'm tempted by the "100W" LED chips seen on eBay, and DX. But I'm suspicious.

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If they come from some no-name company in China I would assume they are lying about their performance. That said, they may still be powerful and cheap enough that you can use them and not care. Depends what your doing.

Agree 100%. That's why I asked about anyone's experience. Anything on Dealextreme is most likely, shall we say, overspecified? What I'm doing is tinkering. So, no special requirements - just want to play with these and see how close their specs are to reality...

They are brought up quite a bit around here - basically they are cheap firepower for the money. Expect around 6,000 lumens from one *if* you can get the driver matched properly and can heat sink it properly. They are fairly rugged, and can often be found for cheap, but getting to the same lumen level with Bridgelux is often not much more money and certainly less power used. Prices are all over the place for the 100watters.

I haven't used one but have you seen the recent Cree 50W and 100W at DX? They atleast visually look like they could be genuine and appear to be good value.

I have one warm white 100w led from an ebay store (£11 and about 4cm) on my electric bike. Even at 950ma it floods the whole road ahead like a car headlamp. I bought the pwm driver for about £3 on ebay and run it at 29.5volts of lifepo4 that runs my bikes motor


See Rule #3 Do not Hot Link images. Please host on an image site, Imageshack or similar and repost – Thanks Norm


It does dim by 50 percent while the bikes pulling me up hills and expect 33v might be better but the unit is rated for 24v and dont want to blow the driver up. I accidentally put 36v into one and it went poof. The circuit is half the size of this unit and easily removed. Ebay lists them all as 8a but i believe its .8a and they expect you to not notice the dot. Mine runs at almost 1amp max and doesnt get more than warm on heat sink the exact width of the led itself meant for an old amd processor. they also do a 150w version with added heat sinks that looks just like this (ebay search term "24v led dimmer")

I have just bought a constant current boost driver with 5a max and was expecting loads more light but i seem to get loads more heat and only a small gain. Once I have it all set up I will have a look in the garden to see is 3a is massively different. My heat sink is now about 90mm long and 50mm tall and smells toasty when run at 3a in still air. When I ride im sure this wont be as bad but for now will stick to 2a max. On the chart it says 5000lumens is at around 1.4a so no need for more than that for me anyway.

Here is the 5a cc driver

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/300811033000?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

this guys driver looks a bit nasty but heres a sample of the wide flood with just reflector
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm85JSbvu0Q

If you want any bean shots with single glass lens on let me know.
I tried a 50w bright white one but everything looked blue and at speed it meant I couldnt see holes in the road properly. Warm white wins for me on this reason

leggera16 said:

Here is the 5a cc driver

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/300811033000?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

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Very nice find on the driver. I have bought 10, 20 and 30w led chips and the 20/30 requires a bit too high voltage for me get easily. Do you know if there is any input current limit (very likely/common) and what it is? I couldn't find it on the page.

Edit: It is implicitiy stated in the power limits:

input voltage greater than 10V, the input 8V output 60W MAX)

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Meaning it probably has a current limit of ~ 8-10A.

It has been my experience sphere testing some of the higher wattage chips that the "no name" ones just do not perform well at all. Even for an instant on test I've seen low numbers like 70 lumens per watt in a very cool white package.

foxtrot824 said:

It has been my experience sphere testing some of the higher wattage chips that the "no name" ones just do not perform well at all. Even for an instant on test I've seen low numbers like 70 lumens per watt in a very cool white package.

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When you look at the price of Bridgelux packages on Digikey, even at low volumes, you are almost always better paying a few more dollars (if at all) to get a product that will perform to the data sheet and will keep performing year and years and years.

Semiman

How feasible is <$100 homemade light, using a 450 watt computer power supply, several high powered leds to get 100lpw with 40k forward facing lumens--with portability of a 10,000 $15 Home Depot light? If not now, when?

We already can purchase a $130 36,000 lumen Metal Halide worklight which uses only 3.6 amp. Its unidirectional design is good indoors. But, directional lighting is better outside. And unidirectional 36k lumens, still typically pales to sunlight's lux, and so, needs a booster light for my needs.

sandos said:

Very nice find on the driver. I have bought 10, 20 and 30w led chips and the 20/30 requires a bit too high voltage for me get easily. Do you know if there is any input current limit (very likely/common) and what it is? I couldn't find it on the page.

Edit: It is implicitiy stated in the power limits:
Meaning it probably has a current limit of ~ 8-10A.

Click to expand...

I dont really know about input current limit. I have only measured 3a output between the unit and the led. When you connect the 5a cc driver the inrush current spark is a pretty loud one, maybe louder than my 20amp motor controller.

I am running lifepo4 headway cells that can deliver 10c pulse discharge rates so at 20ah capacity and 39v I can supply 200amps max. I cut into my pack at 30v (9x3.3v lifepo4 cells) so the boost circuit can run at 33v.

For £15 I got a pwm dimmable driver and epistar 100w led chip. I dont know who epistar is or what these bridgelux chips are all about but if it blows I will have learnt my lesson and will research more next time. I just wanted a cheap big chip to under run it and keep the temps down.



One more cc boost like in the video which is 80w max I think unless you add a fan etc for £5 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/250861934069?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

and heres the one I run now as my dimmer circuit but it wasnt 6 quid when I got mine(didnt know about the image hosting rules) http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/IR-remote...513?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4aa554af91

http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff506/bionicdan/2013-01-06-218_zps04e318e2-1_zpsf0301d00.jpg
Here is my 100w ebay led running 1a at 29.6v on a pwm dimmer driver with reflector and glass lense to focus a little. That tree is about 70ft away and the light is not really pointing over to them as I have the beam set low. The cpu cooler (under the bars) is out of an old passively cooled pentium 2or 3 pc. Its just a prototype for now and I already have a mini led security light housing for it to go in to tidy the job up. As I only use it up full for short 5-10 min bursts and it never seems hot I might drop 2x100w leds in it for a laugh. The lamp housings are £10 on ebay/hongkong and fit in my forks perfectly. I used a mini knife sharpening stone to hone the mating surface flat as it was a little lumpy from the screw holes.

http://www.litecraftcommercial.co.u...curity-Floodlight-with-PIR-in-Satin-Black.asp

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/High-Powe...4554523?pt=US_Light_Bulbs&hash=item3a7cf54f1b

The linked £11.50 100w chip is made of 100 45mil chips which I believe bridgelux use size wise. I thought these were 2watts a chip making it a 200w led rated for 100w for efficiency. Its 90 percent likely that everyone slating the bad test results from cheap 100w chips have had 35mil chips in or some other reduced size. If someone could show me a bridgelux on sale for anywhere near the price of the cheap ones I would go for them, but only see them for 5x the price. Maybe I am not looking hard enough as I dont really need one now.

This cool white led (picture linked below) was too blue and meant you couldnt see the definition of the potholes at 30mph. The warm white contrasts things so much better and doesnt hurt peoples eyes on low.

http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff506/bionicdan/2013-01-06-223_zpsb8fd07ae.jpg
Just an old 50w led same size as the 100w to show possible space for one or two chips. So there is my experience with an under run led £10= led, £10.50p=led housing, £3 dimmer driver (detached from a wall socket sized device and has an ir remote too), £1 cpu heat paste. I looked at many bike lights before this and they all cost £100 and dont put out nearly as much so I am very happy. People that dont have an electric bike would need to find one 8 cell laptop battery and make a diy 30v battery or buy the boost circuit mentioned and use 12v if you need to be mobile with it. I pick up unused acer laptop batteries for £1 a 18650 cell max on auctions from people who bought them in error thinking it would fix their overheated laptop and gets you a 2-3hour runtime.


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http://www.cree.com/led-components-and-modules/products/xlamp/arrays-nondirectional/xlamp-cxa2530

Three of these in a work light would be nice. 3 would offer about 110 forward Voltage. Then, I wonder how much loss with proper ac to dc conversion.

brickbat said:

I'm tempted by the "100W" LED chips seen on eBay, and DX. But I'm suspicious. Anyone try one of these?

Click to expand...

I bought one of them, and posted pictures:
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?344630-My-100-Watt-LED-(pictures)

You will need to buy an adequate heat sink to go along with it. I opted for one with a fan, but if you go for a 50 Watt chip, you probably can do without. The power supply came with the LED chip. I think it needs a special current limiting power supply, designed for LEDs.

All in all, you can save much money, but it is also much work to put everything together, and there is some risk. My LED chip is still going, I am using it as an overhead work light. I made a special light diffusor to put over it, since I do not think it is safe to have such a bright light source exposed like that (with a 100w chip it is almost like looking into a laser beam).