As you can see, the pill is pretty basic—screwed down emitter. I just used AS5 underneath. It’s a shame that this star isn’t offered in Cu (though demand certainly isn’t high enough for SinkPAD to justify the cost of tooling) so soldering the star to the pill wasn’t really an option. But I think a thin layer of AS5 on a lapped star that is tightly screwed to a brass pill is doing the job just fine.
I put kapton tape on the reflector because there isn’t an emitter spacer for the rebel.
I’m not equipped to reflow LEDs onto stars yet (maybe never) but have used Luxeon PC Rebels premade like this: http://www.luxeonstar.com/amber-10mm-rebel-square-coolbase-leds
They drop into the (rare) SK68s with solid pills just fine.
and the 20mm boards also have done fine in a generic 3xAAA light with a solid back to stick the board to.
Drilling and tapping for screws will probably be next for those.
They do get warm — and they’re astonishingly brighter than the old non-PC rebels.
Just learned that they will be available within a few weeks on SinkPAD II boards.
I’m waiting on those for my next experiments.
In email I mentioned and pointed to BLF and CPF and urged Luxeonstar to offer some kind of discount code, since their free shipping cutoff is high. Here’s hoping.
(By the way, the packing is astonishingly high end — mounted LEDs came stacked in little snapcap black plastic cases, labeled, and separated by rounds of antistatic foam. Impressive, since I’ve understood how semiconductors get slowly wounded, accumulating damage over time by static carelessness)
Seems that expressions of interest (and suggestions for improvement) are welcome:
I see that some flowers are deep red color, and that they are darker in white light than those that are medium red color.
With white light, these flowers are white at the tips of the petals and then red shading darker near the center.
With a Philips Luxeon deep red led, they are uniform light shaded.
Apparently the dye they use is dark only because our eyes are insensitive to deep red. Red colored artificial objects look equally light under the deep red light, but they look much brighter in white lite. I have noticed this with other flowers, but the white tips show how little this dark looking dye absorbs deep red light. Bees probably see this as a bright color, without the aid of a flashlight.
Another example is red wine. A glass of half wine and half water looks almost black under white light and almost clear with deep red.
I also have a lime led. Colors look sort of normal under it. There is red and blue but there is no purple. If there is also some white light, the lime led shadows look purple.
Flowers, so far, are the best objects to test color rendering.
Luxeonstar now offers the Rebels in colors on Sinkpad2 bases
and other variations
Canadian source, $100 required to get free shipping, so those real good at soldering tiny things will have better options (grin).
I bought several colors on their 10mm square bases — easily centered, on the few solid-pill AA lights I’ve been lottery-lucky to get.
If you contact them, urge a discount for flashlight modders; I’ve swapped emails with some folks there and pointed them to BLF/CPF, so maybe they will look in.
It would probably work better for me to get the SinkPADs separately, because, unlike XM-Ls, they don’t survive my working on the star they are on. Where can one get SinkPADs or other direct thermal stars that fit Luxeons?
Now, everybody, email their contact, say you read about them here, and hey, they could really get some creative designing done with their products, encouragement all ’round. Maybe they’d consider a BLF/CPF discount, or a one time special buy, or some cooperative effort — their designers ought to be here already (maybe they are?)
I’d bet the 10mm square boards would also make a nice array on a linear or square substrate, allowing whole new shapes.
Anyone tried using a half-cylinder lens over a strip of emitters, say? ”
“Cylindrical lenses … focus light along one axis …. They are used in transforming a point into a line or vice verse.”
The vice versa would be interesting — hmmm, a line of 10mm squares with their output focused into a single point might add up to bright?
And flip then lens away for flood, of course …
A cylindrical lens focuses only in one axis. In the direction of the cylinder axis the light would spread out like from bare leds, so the result would be a line of light.
Seems to me a hexagonal MCPCB would be more useful.
I got early samples of the Sinkpad2s because I asked if they might have Sinkpads some day — they were delighted to say “why yes and very soon” — so I’d bet they will be responsive to questions about buying the bases. They have listed their older bases for sale bare, all along: http://www.luxeonstar.com/rebel-led-mounting-bases and they do say, everywhere, ask if you don’t see what you want.
Here is an article about PC amber outdoor lighting, to replace high and low pressure sodium lights. Less lumens per watt than cool white, but less environmental impact (light pollution).
Added: Redirect Notice
Fritz t., can you try that link again? I’d like to see that article you mentioned.
(My city — despite more than a year trying to educate them about this — is installing very blue-white LEDs, and claiming they’re following dark sky guidelines; I don’t know if they’re lying intentionally, or trusted and got fooled by a clever salesdroid.
I know the broad spectrum of the ‘white’ emitters scatters more, and is worse for astronomy, than the filterable narrow spikes from sodium vapor amber lights.)
Where they got “PC” —
LUXEON® Rebel Phosphor-Converted (PC) ….
It’s a blue emitter, with each color type coated with a phosphor designed to emit that one specific band/color
(rather than with several phosphors selected to cover the spectrum and give ‘cool’ or ‘warm’ ‘white’
