Im still waiting on reflectors to arrive before moving forward. I doubt there will be any issues with the drivers, as long as they are used as intended. The circuit shouldn’t be energized unless connected to a load (sufficiant load resistor or LED’s). It isnt protected from a dead short so care must be exercised. The fet requires a large heat sink, and size would depend on the voltage differential and what must be dissipated as heat in watts. The guy who built the drivers stands by his product and has been very instrumental in giving me the confidence to make this total investment. He makes nothing on his sales and puts them together as a meticulous enthusiast to please others.
A lot (if not all) guys are going with TIR optics in their light bar builds, which isnt the best option for a thrower. Although they do throw moderately well when several are combined with overlaying beams, they wont come close to competing with reflectors that properly focuses the emitters. The reflectors greatly complicate the build, but I have a few ideas how to overcome the limitations without needing a precision reflector alignment girdle to index them and hold them in place. I already have a pair of 100W HID wide angle lights that provide plenty of wide area coverage, so the LED’s are only for longer range. Otherwise, the TIR’s would have been sufficient and a whole lot less complex.
Another obstacle might be in rearranging some individual LED’s to balance the vF of the parallel strings once the heat sink warms up. Its going to depend more on the evenness of the temperatures across the sink and taking voltage measurements of each string once the sink heats up. Im hoping that in using this mega 20 pound well designed sink, combined with copper noctigons and all the emitters from the same batch - should help alleviate some of those potential issues. In testing, Ive found that vF can fluctuate greatly with temperature. Another good article from the reef guys takes a lot of the guess work out and provides some innovative solutions: JP's DIY LED Fixture - Reef Central Online Community but this is operating in a static environment… not dynamic with changing air temp and speed passing over the sink. Ideally, the diver would be of a boost design and provide for huge serial strings (75 - 150VDC), but that doesn’t yet exist.
This isnt going to be a quick build. I still need to rearrange my existing aux lights, wiring, relays, switches, mounts, swap in a different alternator for +200 amps @ low RPM; along with the custom brackets, pulleys, fuses and wiring to support it. It will all get done… eventually.