My Ghetto DIY LED and driver testing platform

I made this ghetto test platform this morning. Just a little DIY project to make it easier to test reflowed LED’s and drivers I build. I spent about $20 on this contraption. I could have spent about $10-13 but I wanted the items so I could build it today. Yes, impatience cost me money again.

Yesterday, I went to Home Depot and bought 3 feet of 10awg wire and a pair of cheapo 50A copper clad battery clips. The battery holder is a keystone off amazon. I could have gotten it cheaper but I didn’t feel like waiting on the slow boat from China. I did some browsing on eBay and got a copper heatsink for a Dell computer which was $8 shipped. It is actually pretty nice. The most important part so some work. I found a 2x4 and didn’t feel like digging out and hooking up my saw so I did manual labor and cut it with a handsaw. I damn near broke a sweat……almost.

Screwed in the battery holder to the 2x4. Soldered some wire to the terminals. I didn’t trust the clamps, so I ran the wire all the way through them and soldered it to the mouth of the clamps. I soldered a terminal to a piece of wire and screwed into the 2x4. This soldered the other end to the bottom of the negative clamp. On to the heatsink. I secured it to the 2x4 similar to how I did the negative clamp. A screwed down soldered on terminal to a piece of wire that is soldered to the heatsink. I took a sharpie and outlined a 16mm and 20mm pcb on top of the heatsink. I then drilled and tapped 4 holes for hold down screws. I put a piece of high dollar ultimate Fujipoly as a thermal interface between the LED pcb and the heatsink.

Pop in a battery and my ghetto testing platform works!

Nice. Do I predict a power supply in the future?

Maybe but that’s a chunk of dough

Those green leads are ready for testing some stadium lighting .

Great set-up!

They definitely shouldn’t be the bottleneck in the setup! I’m thinking about wiring in leads that I can plug into my DMM for current checks. I bought a clamp on meter but I can’t get it to read correctly to save my life. It’s a Andoer UNI-T UT210E True RMS AC/DC Current Mini Clamp Meter w/ Capacitance Tester. I just got it yesterday so I gotta play with it some more

Nice ghetto setup you got there. It’s inspiring me to get off my butt and make one too.

You just need to buy one of these and be done with it.

Plus you can charge batteries with it and so much more :slight_smile:

I was going to buy the 50A model but didn’t feel like running 220 into my office.

I wish but ain’t gonna happen any time soon. Find me one for about $100 and I’ll be all over it like a fat kid on cake.

Just grab one of the DC/DC buck circuits from banggood. No, it’s not exactly a power supply, but it works great for testing led/drivers, calibrating lvp, etc…

(and they’re super cheap)

You can get cheap 0-30V 10Amp Linear on ebay for around 70 dollars sometimes lower on bid ones. They work fine they just don’t have the protections that the higher end ones have and they don’t last as long but still a few years I bet, specially if only using it for drivers. Youtube full of videos on those ebay ones.

That’s nice as well.

20A probably over kill for flashlight drivers anyway but i’d still go with a 10A and keep your sweet Ghetto contraption for testing amp draw from batteries to LED.

I was looking for passive (copper) CPU heat sinks at eBay as well and bought some. But so far, I did not dare to drill holes in the heat sink with heatpipes under the baseplate. In your setup, I see heatpipes too. I’m not sure how deep your holes go, but isn’t it problematic this way (there is a special fluid in them afaik)?

I dunno, maybe I missed the pipes when I drilled. No fluid came out.

For a power supply (it is really handy to have one) I'm still looking for an excuse to buy this one (but I already have two power supplies):

Only for up to 5A, but it is 55 dollar and has had a few descent reviews. i.e. there's one on EEVblog, but I can't find the link.

Ah, I wasn’t worried about the heat pipes to begin with. There is plenty of copper there to transfer the amount of heat I’d need dissipated. If there was fluid in the pipes none drained out. If it’s just air, it’s plugged with the screws.

If I spent the money for a power supply I’d want a 10A one. For now, I can just use my contraption and a battery to accomplish what I want which is to just make sure drivers I build work and my reflowed led’s and dedomed led’s work.