16mm star for IR (infra red) illuminator. Help wanted.

This will give you a bunch of electronics distributors stocking the part, pick one in your part of the world.

It seems that I can not order any SFH4715s.


I will be stuck with China ones...

Anyone tried to de-dome IR's?

I don't think the Chinese IR emitter have domes like the Cree emitters. I think it's just a protective plastic bubble...

mouser has the 4715s and they also have the berquist stars for them. The 4715s will not go on an xpe/g sinkpad because the 4715s and 4725s have the thermal path and anode connected. I blew up a few before i figured it out.

I have not found the need to dedome the osram IR emitters. They put out enough light to illuminate way beyond sensible shooting ranges when used in IR illuminators for nightvision scopes.

i’m actually starting a project a bit similar to yours, i’m building ir light for my camera, which is old sony 8mm 0lux cam.
it has 2 small 850nm leds build in, but i also build array from 13 0,2W 10mm leds. night and day difference.

now i’m building 10w ir light, i’ll use 2 5w ledengin 850hm leds. and 38mm 14* lenses, it’ll run on 4 18650 cells.

so far i got most parts and as time allows start the build, will make a new thread than.

very cool project. I will keep an eye on your progress for sure. The Vf is very high on that emitter. I will have to look around for a boost driver to use in a dual 18650 light. this emitter might be just the ticket in a slight defocused aspheric gun light application.

At what point does one have to start being concerned about IR safety ? a single oslon is rated at 800 mW/sr of radiation. When used to create a flood illuminator i guess its not going to be too dangerous but I imagine i would not walk in front of it if it was focused with a reflector or a lens … what kind of precautions do you guys take? there seems to be very little in way of guidelines on the net.

by the way, why are reflectors way less common in IR builds than aspherics or lenses ? Its the other way around with flashlights.

Only reason I can think of is the oslon emitters half angle which favors aspherics, but is that all or is there some other reason ? are the losses for reflectors/aspherics somehow different with IR and visible light ?

I bought a oslon ir-emitter at rs-online together with stuff from work. Another one I bought from mouser, they ship worldwide to anyone but have high shipping costs (but it is there in three days :-) )

Guys I will just say that you can not buy China 16 mm 1W 850 IR's mounted on 16 mm pcb's anywhere...

They only sell 20 mm ones...

4715s really looks good but Even if I order 10 pcs and pay more than 100$ for them I can bet that I will ruin at least 2 of them...

I seen that Djozz made one 4715s on xpg sinkpad so I guess it would work.

I have XPG noctigons and now some guys says 4715s can bee mounted and some says it can't.

4715s is to expensive for experiment.

@ fred…safety is always a concern. never look directly into a light with an IR emitter.never.
I use a camera that is sensitive to the 850nm and 940nm wavelength to
“see” the beam. They work well in reflector lights. They yield a beam pattern
similiar to an xpe. The aspherics are popular because most applications for the
emitters are in illuminators for weapons mounted nightvision equipment. With
aspherics the user has the ability to adjust the beam to meet the needs of the
situation. Plus the extra distance you get out of a tightly focused beam.

@lum iac…the only way a 4715s can be used on a SinkPad or NOCTIGON is to electrically isolate the star from the negative pathway of the flashlight. As I said above the anode and the thermal slug are connected on the 4715s and 4725s. screwing the star to the light housing short circuits the emitter and poof. I have used a thicker layer of thermal epoxy to attach the star and it works but defeats the whole purpose of mounting the emitter on a Sinkpad. The berquist stars are the best for oslon IR emitter at this time, they can also be filed or turned down to 16mm.

I glued the sinkpad with ir-oslon on the pill with arctic alumina adhesive. The layer can be really thin, it is a perfect isolator, so heatsinking is still very good. You can measure continuety with a DMM while glueing to check what is going on

You can see 850nm/940nm as a faint purple flash on a cellphone camera, you don’t need a specialized camera. I use my cellphone camera for testing TV-B-Gone’s after I build them.

Putting an Oslon on a sinkpad/noctigon doesn’t really defeat the point - I’m pretty sure the the delta-C/watt across the few square centimeters of thermal epoxy under a star should be less than the delta-C/watt across the usual MCPCB dielectric in a the tiny bit of area under the LED.

Thanks guys, plenty of good advices in this thread now.

Well I did make some orders:

1W IR 850 from DX

http://dx.com/p/1w-850nm-infrared-ir-led-emitter-5-piece-pack-145716

1W IR with different optics(dome) from ali express:

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-shipping-10pcs-Infrared-transmitting-tube-1w-high-power-infrared-LED-lamp-bead-850-nm-45mil/692588556.html

I also ordered above mentioned 16 mm LED PCB's for 1-5W leds from DX and Ali express ( I want they come as fast as possible so if one of them fails probably other won't :) )



But I am still concerned about suitable driver for China 1W IR 850

I have few 4×AMC7135 (i don't have 2×AMC7135 as I mentioned above)


Main question for you guys is do I really have suitable driver for this or I have to order something else?
If I don't have please recommend some other drivers.Maybe more suitable than this one?

I mean we mentioned that max drive current for cheap China 1W ir is 0,7A. I am planing to use it on 1×18650 flashlight and this 4×amc7135(I will unsolder 2 amc's) will heat much more than maybe other type of driver?

Well I can slap things together but I am not driver expert. Need your opinion guys with link if any.

Just desolder two AMC7135s from your 4x drivers.

will it work. yup
is AA epoxy a perfect isolator-nope
is the heatsinking still very good. not by my standards. Almost a 20% drop in output within seconds of start up vs a star mounted with screws and metal to metal contact.

If it’s the only way you can to attach the star then go for it.

Make it host positive. :slight_smile:

you could solder\reflow led on the pill itself, can’t get any better heatpath.

i just thought of that, and tried before posting, never reflowed on brass pill before, i didn’t have any bare led, so i soldered\reflowed a piece of brass, on to brass pill. if that worked i see why led shouldn’t. here and here

i use tiny frying pan and gas oven. low setting, as soon as paste melts i center led, and shut off heat, works great, not a single led was ever ruined in process.

i soldered those type of leds on 20mm stars, dozen of times, they have quite large heatpad, almost like p7, i never seen any of such leds sold, that had soldered heatpad, all soldered just by legs manualy, and led just sits on the star, sometimes they put thermal paste.

lol, now i just thought, is the heatpad electrically neutral, in those leds?

Well I still don't have it but as you told heatpad is electrically neutral so it should not be soldered...

But even in other case those plastic around IR emitter would burn upon re flowing... :)

So only artic alumina or even fujik under the bottom of emitter...I think China sellers put Fujik.

So no any further driver suggestions for 1W IR 850 China led?

So far we have only 0,7A AMC7135(domesticus vulgaris :) ) driver recommendation...

Your experience will be much appreciated...

Kevin I see that you replied to Djozz,

Artic Alumina is concrete solid thermal mass with an excellent thermal properties(similar to artic silver 5 that people usually put on cpus or under the star with screws mounted) so I guess it should work even better considering that Sinkpad is copper PCB, and your is aluminum?

So no way he got 20% drop. I would try that Oslon on mine XPG Noctigon but as Djozz said they have ridiculous expensive Oslon emitter + ridiculously expensive post. I am not willing to take such risk.