Warning! emitters from stars are more fragile.

I have been commissioned by someone to mod some lights for them.
I'm having fun with that project for real btw. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Some of the emitters were well, bare emitters.
Some were on stars.
Had one casualty when I separated the stars from thier emitters when a lead broke and is only hanging by a hair now.
They don't bend well beyond several degrees up or down.
Thank goodness and the other party for sending an extra star.
Bare, non starred emitters on the other hand, can have thier leads bent around some to mount as desired.
Just some thoughts when debating between stars versus emitters, and good luck.

Do you think that the heat of soldering the emitter to the star in the first place plays a part in the flexability of the leads?

I'm really suprised that we don't hear more about this issue than we do. The LEDs removed from "stars" are scored across the leads just inside the "hump" and there's a hole in the lead to boot. Does anyone know why this is? It almost seems like Lumileds doesn't want us to remove the LEDs from the star. I don't that this is the case, but I can't see any other reason for them to intentionally weaken the leads.

Peter

It actually looks like they switched around the leads.

Compare the leads on a 1W Luxeon vs a LuxIII and it looks like the hole in the +ve lead of a LuxIII is the tab used on a 1W to indicate positive. This hole in the LuxIII's lead(s) really weakens the tab as a whole, and I have broken them off a couple of times (I often have to trim the leads to fit the emitters in e-series heads, so it is not an issue for me).

It's a clumsy explanation, but I hope it helps. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Great observation, wasabe64. I got that impression also when I was removing my last batch of TY0Ls from their stars. Seeing the much smaller tabs, I thought that they made all the emitters the same, then chopped off the 'other' set of tabs depending on which mounting they were intended for.