No seriously...it's fine...I was looking at how it was assembled.....I noticed it even used thermal paste on back of EACH LEDs to the heat sink which is metal, the other part of the "heat sink" is actually plastic....
I was unable to open the driver part without the fear of breaking it. I spent enough money NOT to damage it!
This right here is a good design! Heat sinking the LEDs the right way! Any chance of seeing the other side of the LEDs themselves? How much did you pay for this thing anyway?
The design scares me a bit: The junky "paper" PCB and only thermal paste on such small pads, not much reliable combination. I like to see rather the aluminum substrate PCB - it is the safest method to mount power LED's...
Easy way to fix that is to clean off all the paste from both die and heatsink, degrease with a aggressive solvent and then epoxy the die to the heatsink with a metal loaded epoxy. Assemble and apply pressure to the top of the dies to make a good bond until the epoxy has cured. That will be a good, if permanent, bond with very low loss across it. I have done this to a few of the original 80286 chips that dissipated 12W without a heatsink, to bond one to the top where there was no other way to attach. Dropped the die surface from around 80C to around 40C ( ambient) and enabled a small amount of overclocking without melting the chip off the board. Also made it more reliable without needing a fan.
I bet in the future if they have enough budget to form a LED replacement kit which it contains replacement LED assembly and alcohol pad the clean the surface of the heat sink assembly. Once the consumer replace the LED assembly, they should have it merry away with this replaced modular.
Medved, can you explain to me what a "paper" PCB is exactly...give me or show me differences of PCB stuff....
I am sorta into electronics myself...a very nice Electrical Engineer gave me some expensive electronics/electrical devices and I want to try to learn some things...
@Jace:
In the electronics different materialsare used as the substrate insulation material to make the PCB. One of the most used is called "FR4", what is in fact glass-fiber fabric reinforced epoxy (so quite common laminate). This allow to do very fine PCB's (multiayer with electroplated vias,...), it is quite robust against water and other chemicals, quite mechanically tough, but due to the glass content is quite expensive to process (drill, cut,...) - tools loosen their sharpness quite fast, so need frequent replacement.
Other, quite common material is phenol epoxy soaked into cellulose (so the "paper" PCB). This does not contain such hard components (and it is more brittle), so it is easier and cheaper to mechanically process. But it is not possible to make fine surface in holes, so the electroplating does not work, so vias are not feasible with this material. This limit it's use for only single sided PCB's, what are then cheap to produce.
This material sometimes suffer from the water absrbtion, so has worse insulation capabilities and is more thermally sensitive. Generally yield worse reliability then FR4, but is way cheaper.
Other material i've seen look like the "paper PCB", but with something, what look like the thin glass-fiebre layer on the surface. It is more thermally robust then the simplest "paper", but not as expensive as FR4. This is generally used for more thermally loaded, but still "to be cheap" electronic, i've seen it mostly in PC power supplies, wall "adapters" and simpler lighting ballasts (those sufficing with singe interconnection layer).
The another material uses aluminium as base substrate, then thin layer of the electrically insulating, but thermally conductive material and on top of this cooper plate (for interconnections). This is used for power, surface mount components and it is expected, then it is finally placed (as the whole, fully assembled PCB) onto the heatsink - good examples are those "star" LED modules: LED device is soldered to this small PCB and this PCB is then bolted to the heatsink.
And then there are special materials for low leakage/high voltage, microwave applications, integrated capacitors (one of insulating layers in multlayer PCB stack is made with high permitivity, so with copper layers form flat, low ESL/ESR decoupling capacitor integrated in the PCB - used in digital boards, like PC motherboards,...)
Thanks for sharing dude...but let me ask you...is there other ways to identify them...by looking at them (like you did on the picture) such as in colors or whatever etc...I have seen blue motherboards, purple and other colors...does that also matter?
By the texture of the cuts:
FR4 has layers of glass fieber fabric soaked in epoxy trough the whole volume. Moreover sides are frequently machined to nice, smooth surfaces, thing not possible with the "paper" base. It's color is usually gray and it is quite translucent. Holes use to have nice, smooth edges. If the PCB is multilayer (more then 1 copper layer) and has holes (interconnections between layers) plated (the solder go trough the whole PCB thickness), it is likely this material, as the "paper" based do not allow this. Usually seems to be tolerant to excessive mechanical bending without visible damage (but be aware, such stress like to crack the cooper foil)
"Paper PCB" has paper-like structure rough the whole volume and lack any fabric-like structure. Holes have quite rough edges (they seem to me to be usually stamped and not drilled - way faster, so cheaper method, not usable with the tough FR4). It is rather fragile (it start to crack when excessively bend). Usually is brown (dark - the cheapest or light tone - a bit better), both quite opaque to the light.
This "high temperature paper" you recognize, then it has paper-like core, but on surfaces (but below the copper) are clearly visible, but not much dense fabric texture. Usually it is "brownish, dirty white" surface, the volume is opaque to the light.
The aluminium (or other metal) substrate PCB you recognize, as majority of it's volume is of the metal plate, the insulating layer is only thin on the surface.
But be aware of the solder mask, what is applied on top of the copper layer and it is usually this, what give to PCB's greenish look.
And when evaluating the opacity, you should find an area, where is no copper (e.g. on PC motherboards such place is not present on the board at all, but it is clearly multilayer)
I have a pair of the 10 watt PAR30 versions of this installed in the track lights in my kitchen. I'm quite pleased with them and the quality of their light output. The only thing I did notice is their beam is more focused than the halogen PAR lamps, making them seem almost like spot lights.
Beam focusing is the usual trick, how to boost-up candela figures and spread the false impression about higher efficacy with LED's... Then you buy it, it make one bright spot (same as the advertised incandescent "equivalent"), but everything else is dark. And with that equivalent you get plenty of light around too...
The rated lumen output on the ones I have is a little over half of what a 50 watt halogen PAR lamps they replace have. They compensate for that by having a more focused beam.
For that reason (as if cost wasn't prohibitive enough), I couldn't use these in all my kitchen track heads, but combined with standard halogen lamps, they make a nice effect
Just to tell you all I use this lamp a lot and it still works GREAT! I also have a newer and silver version of the GE and dimmable....when I turn it off it actually fades off slowly because it has a cap inside it...It is built very similar but different though....screws are in different places...and its a little smaller too
I quite pleased with the ones I have. My kitchen has 5 track heads, two of them fitted with 50 watt halogens and the other 3 fitted with these LEDs. The combination seems to work quite well for the past year or so.
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I bet in the future if they have enough budget to form a LED replacement kit which it contains replacement LED assembly and alcohol pad the clean the surface of the heat sink assembly. Once the consumer replace the LED assembly, they should have it merry away with this replaced modular.
I am sorta into electronics myself...a very nice Electrical Engineer gave me some expensive electronics/electrical devices and I want to try to learn some things...
In the electronics different materialsare used as the substrate insulation material to make the PCB. One of the most used is called "FR4", what is in fact glass-fiber fabric reinforced epoxy (so quite common laminate). This allow to do very fine PCB's (multiayer with electroplated vias,...), it is quite robust against water and other chemicals, quite mechanically tough, but due to the glass content is quite expensive to process (drill, cut,...) - tools loosen their sharpness quite fast, so need frequent replacement.
Other, quite common material is phenol epoxy soaked into cellulose (so the "paper" PCB). This does not contain such hard components (and it is more brittle), so it is easier and cheaper to mechanically process. But it is not possible to make fine surface in holes, so the electroplating does not work, so vias are not feasible with this material. This limit it's use for only single sided PCB's, what are then cheap to produce.
This material sometimes suffer from the water absrbtion, so has worse insulation capabilities and is more thermally sensitive. Generally yield worse reliability then FR4, but is way cheaper.
Other material i've seen look like the "paper PCB", but with something, what look like the thin glass-fiebre layer on the surface. It is more thermally robust then the simplest "paper", but not as expensive as FR4. This is generally used for more thermally loaded, but still "to be cheap" electronic, i've seen it mostly in PC power supplies, wall "adapters" and simpler lighting ballasts (those sufficing with singe interconnection layer).
The another material uses aluminium as base substrate, then thin layer of the electrically insulating, but thermally conductive material and on top of this cooper plate (for interconnections). This is used for power, surface mount components and it is expected, then it is finally placed (as the whole, fully assembled PCB) onto the heatsink - good examples are those "star" LED modules: LED device is soldered to this small PCB and this PCB is then bolted to the heatsink.
And then there are special materials for low leakage/high voltage, microwave applications, integrated capacitors (one of insulating layers in multlayer PCB stack is made with high permitivity, so with copper layers form flat, low ESL/ESR decoupling capacitor integrated in the PCB - used in digital boards, like PC motherboards,...)
FR4 has layers of glass fieber fabric soaked in epoxy trough the whole volume. Moreover sides are frequently machined to nice, smooth surfaces, thing not possible with the "paper" base. It's color is usually gray and it is quite translucent. Holes use to have nice, smooth edges. If the PCB is multilayer (more then 1 copper layer) and has holes (interconnections between layers) plated (the solder go trough the whole PCB thickness), it is likely this material, as the "paper" based do not allow this. Usually seems to be tolerant to excessive mechanical bending without visible damage (but be aware, such stress like to crack the cooper foil)
"Paper PCB" has paper-like structure rough the whole volume and lack any fabric-like structure. Holes have quite rough edges (they seem to me to be usually stamped and not drilled - way faster, so cheaper method, not usable with the tough FR4). It is rather fragile (it start to crack when excessively bend). Usually is brown (dark - the cheapest or light tone - a bit better), both quite opaque to the light.
This "high temperature paper" you recognize, then it has paper-like core, but on surfaces (but below the copper) are clearly visible, but not much dense fabric texture. Usually it is "brownish, dirty white" surface, the volume is opaque to the light.
The aluminium (or other metal) substrate PCB you recognize, as majority of it's volume is of the metal plate, the insulating layer is only thin on the surface.
But be aware of the solder mask, what is applied on top of the copper layer and it is usually this, what give to PCB's greenish look.
And when evaluating the opacity, you should find an area, where is no copper (e.g. on PC motherboards such place is not present on the board at all, but it is clearly multilayer)
For that reason (as if cost wasn't prohibitive enough), I couldn't use these in all my kitchen track heads, but combined with standard halogen lamps, they make a nice effect