Yep, electric griddles must be common to use. My EE buddy here also uses one at home with an adjustable temperature for doing his own boards. He upgraded from his coffee mug warmers because he needed something bigger, so he gave me his old warmer. If I was doing a bit larger scale batches, I would definitely invest in one.
For those in the NY metropolitan area, I was in Ace Hardware (Massapequa Store) and spotted Ace brand toluene in 1 Gallon cans marked down from $19.99 to $6.50. I don’t know if this a chain-wise clearance or local the this particular franchise owner or just this store. This was old stock with rust on the cans so possibly this store manager decided to move them out.
Gee, a gallon of Toluene for 6½ bucks…
I finally got my 1 Liter in today, 24 bucks shipped from Germany.
Had to fill out a signed end user declaration and a copy of my ID before they sent it.
But i got the >99.5% stuff.
The smell even creeps through the bottle cap… :person_facepalming:
2x SST-40.
I bought them to dedome them basically.
One will go in a modded Solarstorm SC01 (8x 7135) 14500 ‘mini thrower’.
The other one in an aspheric, probably my B158 on 4.5 Amperes CC FET driver.
I have a bunch of XP-G2 LEDs too, old and new, and a bunch of XM-L2, also some XP-E2.
Good to have the stuff in stock for future plans.
I don’t think there’s any need to pay the premium for reagent grade toluene, solvent grade should serve well enough IMO. I guess they want to ensure you’re not making bathtub TNT.
With the low forward voltage, it would seem this should be a great led for regulated multi emitter lights. Its not a lot less watts, but over several emitters it adds up. Less heat, slightly more run time. Sounds good to me.
Hmm, if somebody made a mcpcb for these in a 20mm triple……… With a fet driver could be interesting as well if they push that much easier than xp-g3’s do.
After checking my Ali sst-40s I realized they are b grade, half have bubles in dome and some are not square but wider and centering dics not fit them.
KD is better place to buy, better bin, higher price though.
Well, i bought 2 SST-40 form AliExpress, and i put them in pure toluene…
The first one got the chip detached from the 5050 base, it seems it wasn’t soldered on there properly…
So it died in the toluene, but i almost managed to reflow the chip back on the 5050 base, but something went wrong, it didn’t work anymore…
Interesting discovery though, because i think you could reflow the chip directly on to copper, and find a way to connect the bond wires to ‘something near by’, improving the thermal path from chip to whatever copper you want.
But i’m not buying them from AliExpress anymore.
It seems they are factory rejects.
The second survived the ordeal, it is dedomed now.
I will try warm or hot toluene, because there are still some bits of silicone on the phosphor, even after leaving it in toluene for some 36 hours…
But i was afraid the bonding between chip and phosphor would dissolve, like someone described happening earlier in this (or another) thread.
So i will try solving at higher temperatures with the 2nd SST-40, see if i can get it totally clean.
Meanwhile i have one from KD too.
I’m sure the chip will not fall of off that one… :person_facepalming:
I got 1 half way decent one out of like 30, decent that the bond wires didn’t break, but still, silicone remains are hanging off the bond wires. All of the SST-40’s I got came from Kaidomian. I have 20 SST-40 N4 AD’s coming 12 of which are going to replace the XML’s in my TR-J20, the rest, I’ll try a different approach.