Received 5-Watt Luxeons Today - Pictures

Well, the brown santa guy in the brown UPS truck dropped off some cyan 5-watt Luxeons today, and I must say they are beautiful.

They look just like the 1-watt high domes as far as lens shape, but of course there's that little cluster of four Caesar's Crazy Bread finger-looking clusters stuck together in the middle.

I powered it at 4.5V (3AAs surging current at about 890mah) and it glowed -- pretty dimly. But I understand there's an exponential ramp-up of brightness (and heat I am sure) with very slight increases in current.

The picture at the top was taken with some of the 5-watts lined up beneath the goofy nameplate I got free for buying a Plano tackle box for my lighting stuff. They said to pick any name I wanted so I figured, "What the hell...":



Gotta go get me a bench power supply now, before I start frying these things at $25 a pop. Anybody know of some good ones?

Thanks for the pics. I need to get some now. Do the optics fit on them?

Yes, I believe so...

way cool!

Snap!
Krackle!
POP!

Don't run Luxeon Stars without a heatsink!

It's fine to run Luxeon Star Emitters without a heat sink, as long as you run them at low enough current. With proper heat sinking, the devices are rated at 700mA. Without any heat sinking at all beyond the case and terminals, I'm sure that the devices can take 20mA. But if you run them at any significant fraction of full power, you will toast them in a jiffy.

I find it difficult to believe that you got 890mA to flow at 4.5V; might it have been 890uA? With other Lumileds products, I've gotten significant light at well below rated voltage and current.

-Jon