First look at Nichia 119D D340 sm505 R70

The dedomed XHP70.2 was a big increase over stock.

You mean over the first generation? I don’t know if it was a big increase, and it’s still not a high luminance emitter. I think most of the improvement over the XHP70 has to do with the less dim cross of the XHP70.2. In a reflector light the dark spaces between the dies decreases the peak beam intensity, and so the XHP70.2 takes less of hit with its less-dark cross.

I think Clemence’s new avatar is too colorful and now everybody gets us mixed up.

Not as colorful as yours. There are at least three people with lookalike avatars in BLF :partying_face:

- Clemence

Thanks Clemence!
What is Tj at high current?
:wink:

I don’t know, didn’t measure it. Judging from the aluminum adapter temp and the board and thermal resistance it’s still far from 150C. It’s easy to measure later. All I have to do is just heat it to two known temperatures and measure the forward voltage as fast as possible.

- Clemence

I like your test setup :+1:
If you add a disc with cutted slots or holes in the chuck you can repeat Foucault’s light speed experiment.

Thanks.
I’d prefer to just examine his results (for now) than to repeat it. :stuck_out_tongue:

UPDATE 180622:
Dedoming attempt was a success! Check OP for details

- Clemence

Ohhh boy, game on! Looking forward to your impressions.

Sorry, I still haven’t done the lux test for the dedomed 119D yet. Was too busy tour-guiding my friend’s family. Here’s some pictures, mind the quality they’re taken with my old phone’s camera.

Been living in Bali for almost 5 years but never knew this place. Penglipuran Village

The area is canopied in dense bamboo forest. This is a public roadway. Conserved and harvested by traditional local regulation to keep it that way for hundreds of years.

A nice snorkeling/spearfishing spot 7 driving minutes from my workshop:

Cheap fresh seafood in Kedonganan fishermen village:
You can buy them directly from the traditional market (equipped with modern digital scale) and get them grilled in the “budget restaurants” next to the market. This way you’ll get roughly 1/3 the cost as if you spend in fancy “tourists” restaurants in the area.

- 1kg Travelly = USD 4,3

- 0,5kg Tiger shrimps = USD 4

- 0,5kg cuttlefish = USD 3,5.

  • The grilling cost is USD 2,8 (1,4/kg whatever it is).

- Clemence

Looking amazing Clemence!

I want to try that shrimp!

UPDATE 180626:
Beam shots added

- Clemence

Any news about the lux tests?

UPDATE 190216: 119D vs 219D test result

I finally received 219D samples with same bin to 119D samples received earlier. I supposed to do the test about 3 months ago but I lost my motivation due to disappointing 119D/219D performance. Yesterday I decided to take a one day break from making lights, out of boredom. I don’t care what the output these 119D/219D might be. And these LEDs really have no value to me since they’re limited to R70 and has no significant over current capability. That was a loss paying $80 for 119D custom clearance
I’m more interested in proving my theory that LED with 2 pads has higher performance potential than traditional (well, now it’s considered traditional) 3 pads with dedicated thermal bridge. And also to test if hot-rodders will benefit from pure Indium solder,

Found a broken aquarium cooler parts and decided to improve the test for faster readings and more consistent results. Total loss cooling was chosen rather than making a dedicated automatic Peltier cooling unit. Water temp is relative constant (within hours) and provide ample cooling with very few parts needed.

Measurement recorded manually anytime the voltage reading stabilized. With this massive cooling, I can cut down recording time to less than 2 minutes per current steps compared to normal air or passive cooling. My friend asked Nichia for 219D samples, he’s a street light manufacturer. Received 6pcs 219D sm505 D340 R70 samples from him. Here’s the specimens:

Much larger cooling area in 119D. Nichia is very thrifty when it comes to thermal pad unlike Cree which uses as large as possible thermal pad. I have a strong feeling that the larger pads in 119D affects current carrying and current heating characteristic. Smaller pad will be hotter for any amount current it passes through.

Before we begin please check the summary below.

And….crap….I forgot to use the same resolution as my earlier test!! I used the same 100mA resolution from 100mA - 1000mA, and but then 250mA from 1A - 6A. While previous test was done with 200mA resolution from 1A - 5A. So, I had to interpolate some numbers using 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, and 5A as my anchor points. This is why later you’ll see dots rather than continuous plot in the chart result.
My first test result used derived data from Nichia data sheet and measurement lux. Now using Maukka’s calibrated lights I can measure the real output. The output numbers at 700mA barely meets the specified 340lm - 360lm but this is to be expected since Nichia use 25°C Tj and 10ms pulsed current which I can’t replicate.

And the result was really satisfying:
Inline with my previous test with 319A, aluminum VR16SP4 with normal 63/37 performs slightly lower than copper DTP above rated manufacturer maximum current. But the result with Indium surprised me, I didn’t expect such gain. I’ve been using Indium for all my nano-ceramic soldering just because it allows me to get cleaner and faster result while put less stress to the LEDs. This extra performance was unexpected.
I don’t think good DTP MCPCB would benefit much from pure indium other than reduced soldering temp required (160°C is all you need to reflow Indium). This because I suspect any good DTP MCPCB already near its peak performance limit. Pure indium will also benefit all non DTP MCPCB as long as the LED has relatively large pad(s).

LED remains:

CONCLUSION:
119D/219D
119D has higher potential output than 219D at extreme current
Both have very good output for its (die) size up to rated current (2A).
With their “ezy-dedome” feature is a good choice for small medium power thrower
They’re not good LED for extreme modifications beyond rated current

Extra result observed
With proper MCPCB 2 pads LED have higher potential performance than 3 pads LED because of larger cooling area and less current resistance. This simplifies MCPCB design. Currently, there are more high performance non DTP with very close performance to DTP previously impossible. Cost, while already vastly reduced compared to few years back still limits end product use of these MCPCBs. For example, to get twice the performance of VR16S1 there’s a steep 6x cost increase.
To get higher performance out of nano-ceramic MCPCB without spending too much in MCPCB technology, pure indium solder is a cheaper option affordable for hobbyist like us.

- Clemence

Wow Indium is amazing, but doubt manufacturers will be willing to spend extra for it in the very competitive flashlight world. Thanks for posting the very interesting and useful results.

I mean, if we could manage a bulk order of indium solder, maybe we could get the prices down.

And with LEDs like the XHP70.2/CFT-90 where power density is insane, or even the 1mm2/2mm2 White Flats, Indium could get a nice performance increase.

Nice result, thanks!
Though I wonder how much of it is caused by different thermal paste. I would expect neither solder nor paste to have such big effect…
Maybe it’s about solder microstructure? Voids?

Actually I think that indium could give higher benefit on DTP boards. And with LEDs that have small thermal pads.
That’s because there solder is a bigger part of total thermal resistance.

I would also expect it to be a bigger deal with LEDs that are more capable of being overdriven. There are a few LEDs that have > 8W/mm² of thermal pad.

Yes, the XH35 (HI) and the Osram White Flat LEDs would be a good for an additional test.

Solder paste vs bearing grease don’t make measurable different at all, minuscule if there’s any. I tested it before. Due to these factors:

- The LED cooling pads total surface area is very small compared to the MCPCB contact area.

- Both MCPCB and the copper water block lapped to almost mirror finish on a piece of thick glass using #320, #1000, and #2000 SiC powder. I could fine lap them with superfine diamond lapping paste but didn’t do it.

  • Only very little amount of thermal paste/grease applied, and most of them squeezed off by the overkill clamping force of two M10 bolts

You are probably right about DTP MCPCB benefits more from Indium than non DTP MCPCB. But factor these:

  • Most high performance DTPs has raised thermal pad to make very thin solder bond line. Sinkpad is not as good as Noctigon, Kerui, or perhaps L4P (haven’t tried L4P MCPCB) in that regards because thermal pad height is positioned lower than the anode/cathode pads (thicker solder joint). Very thin solder bond line creates small thermal resistance difference between solder materials (50 W/MK for Sn63Pb37 vs 80 W/MK for In100. But doubling the pad surface area will nett you much higher difference. With 15 microns solder bond line we only get 38% thermal resistance reduction with In100. With the same 15 microns bond line but doubling the area we get 69% thermal resistance reduction.

- Another bottleneck in MCPCB after the solder material itself is the surface finish plating. ENIG is very common these days. The heat from LED has to travel through a layer of nickel. Although very thin, Nickel has thermal conductivity <90 W/MK at LED operating temp.

Stay tune, more test to come!

- Clemence