Yes, pressed (pushed) to the point the top is flush with the pill ledge. That way the led base makes direct contact with both the pill and penny. Hopefully you will need the emitters to be higher. You could make the penny fit where the stock emitter base sits. That could be much easier to do. If that is not high enough, you could solder pennies on top of that penny. I get the impression you’re already thinking that.
more or less, yes. Of course, it’s fairly easy to pry off a star glued with AA.
I don’t know if (or how) to do what I think you said. I would think that if the penny/disk could be made into the hole, it’d just fall through the hole, rather than press fit into it, esp. if you expect it to be level with the top edge of the ridge.
I’m trying a different approach. I’ve made a disk that can pressfit when you shove it into the pill from the driver end of the pill. So now, when that disk is in the pill, the top edge of the disk is at the bottom of the ridge.
Next, I’m going to make another, smaller disk, smaller than the diameter of the hole, and then try to solder that to the top of that first disk.
So, when I push the disk pair into the pill (from the driver end) it’ll pressfit into the pill, but the 2nd smaller disk will be hopefully near the level of the top of the ridge (upon which the emitter board sits. Then, from the top of the pill, I’ll fill it with thermal compound, and lay the emitter board on top of that, to fill in any gaps from the bottom of the emitter board to the disk pair.
Not great, but not sure what else to do :(. I think it’ll be better than the original design though, thermal-wise?
Jim
Edit: A couple of things I forgot to mention:
1) On the driver end of the pill, the contact board just pushes out (pressfit into pill), but, at least on mine, there is a small spring steel (I think) ring “behind” the contact board. I didn’t notice it until it fell out. Anyway, at least on mine, the contact board won’t stay in the pill when you pressfit it back into the pill unless you put that ring back in before you try to pressfit the contact board back in.
2) On my 3up build, the solder pads for + and - on the ledsupply 3up are both on one end of the emitter board, unlike normal emitter boards, so I’m having to grind out/widen one of the holes in the ridge. Actually, I think you have to grind out all the way through the pill. Otherwise, the way that one of wires runs will get pinched. When that happens, the insulation on that wire will get stripped (ask me how I know :)!).
That sounds pretty good. I guess I do about the same thing because I usually use at least 2 pennies. You’re right, there is not much material to press the top penny into. After doing that, I drill the holes for the emitter wires.
Well, this isn’t working out too well :(. I thought that I had made a disk that would pressfit into the pill (from the driver side) up to the ridge, but it turns out the reason it was able to stay in place was that I had a bunch of flux in there, left from my earlier soldering attempt.
After I cleaned the rosin out, the disk will go in, easily, but won’t stay in place. I’m trying to make another one, a little tighter, but maybe something like O-L’s idea, of AA’ing the disk (but just to the pill sides and the ridge) may be the only way, since I can’t get any solder to flow on the aluminum pill :(?
I think that I got something that works. I came to the realization (DUH :)!) that “press-fit” doesn’t necessarily mean you can press it in using your fingers :).
What I did was cut a penny down until it was about the size of the hole that it needed to go into on the driver end, then I hammered it into the pill:
Then, I made a smaller disk that would fit into the hole that would normally be under the emitter, and put a drop of solder on top of the penny that was already pressed into the pill, dropped the smaller disk into the emitter end, and put a 50W iron on top of the top disk. In other words, I did a kind of reflow from the top. This is what I got:
There was some solder on the soldering iron, so unfortunately some of that flowed onto to top disk, which you can see in that pic. I need to figure out how to smooth/lap that, but it’s just about the same height as the ridge around the emitter end of the pill. Worst case, I’ll use some thermal compound and hope that that’ll fill in the gaps.
In the 2nd pic, you can see that I enlarged one of the holes that was originally in the pill to allow the emitter wires to come out on one side of the pill, since the 3up has + and - solder pads on the same side.
BTW, I’ve realized that I’ve kind of hi-jacked O-Ls thread, but some of this might be applicable to his original mod. I’ll try to post later messages on my 3up mod on my thread after this.
Sorry, Old-Lumens :(…