# SSC [email protected] with good heatsink - is this save or to much?



## ichoderso (Nov 19, 2008)

Aluminium or copper heatsink?
thermal protection on the heatsink ( 50 or 60C??)
LED direct glued on Heatsink with Arctic Silver thermal adhesive?
or better use a Star LED??

is it possible to drive it with 4A or is it to much??

thank you,
Jens


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## Gunner12 (Nov 19, 2008)

I'd say copper heatsink with the bare LED soldered to the heatsink and thermal protection just incase if you want to run it in relative safety at 4 amps.

An active cooling system wouldn't be a bad idea either.


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## bshanahan14rulz (Feb 7, 2009)

how do you solder an emitter to a heatsink directly?


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## tebore (Feb 7, 2009)

bshanahan14rulz said:


> how do you solder an emitter to a heatsink directly?



A method called reflow soldering.

I've tried putting solder paste on and then putting the parts on a hot iron and it worked.


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## IMSabbel (Feb 8, 2009)

ichoderso said:


> Aluminium or copper heatsink?
> thermal protection on the heatsink ( 50 or 60C??)
> LED direct glued on Heatsink with Arctic Silver thermal adhesive?
> or better use a Star LED??
> ...



Should be fine. IF you make the thermal adhesive layer thin. The key to this is lots of pressure during curing.
Otherwise, dont expect 100k hours out of it, but otherwise, they also do 8Amps...

I do not think reflow soldering is needed. I had a P7, on a DX star (thermal interface 1), glued onto a small cpu heatsink with thermal expoxy (inteface 2), running at 4A for several hours in a test. Nothing bad happened. 
With a better thermal contact, and a bigger heatsink or a fan, there should be no problem at all.


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## bshanahan14rulz (Feb 10, 2009)

tebore said:


> A method called reflow soldering.
> 
> I've tried putting solder paste on and then putting the parts on a hot iron and it worked.



wouldn't I need to get the heatsink hot first, put solder paste on it, wait for paste to flow, then drop LED on there? How do I cool it fast enough to keep my LED from sizzling? perhaps dunk the heatsink fins in water? I need to find someone with a torch, thatwould probably heat up this thing better. How detrimental to the heat transfer process would using a mcpcb and some high quality thermal grease be? the shoppe is about to offer mcpcb for this LED and I might just get one of those to mount on heatsink, seems way easier.


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## LukeA (Feb 10, 2009)

The SSC's slug isn't electrically neutral.


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## tebore (Feb 10, 2009)

bshanahan14rulz said:


> wouldn't I need to get the heatsink hot first, put solder paste on it, wait for paste to flow, then drop LED on there? How do I cool it fast enough to keep my LED from sizzling? perhaps dunk the heatsink fins in water? I need to find someone with a torch, thatwould probably heat up this thing better. How detrimental to the heat transfer process would using a mcpcb and some high quality thermal grease be? the shoppe is about to offer mcpcb for this LED and I might just get one of those to mount on heatsink, seems way easier.



There's different ways of doing it. 

Most of the time you for us DIY you put some paste on and put it to your heat source to get the flux to burn off and for the solder in it to melt. You can bake it if your parts are not too sensitive to temps or just using an iron to heat the area quickly.


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## bshanahan14rulz (Feb 10, 2009)

I just have a 25W soldering iron (probably not enough to heat up this heatsink enough to even melt flux) and I can't see how I would get the voluminous copper block hot enough by standing the heatsink on its fins on the stove. I think I will order a mcpcb and slap that sucker onto heatsink with some arctic silver grease. Thanks for the info though =)


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## SmurfTacular (Apr 26, 2010)

IMSabbel said:


> Should be fine. IF you make the thermal adhesive layer thin. The key to this is lots of pressure during curing.
> Otherwise, dont expect 100k hours out of it, but otherwise,_* they also do 8Amps...*_
> 
> I do not think reflow soldering is needed. I had a P7, on a DX star (thermal interface 1), glued onto a small cpu heatsink with thermal expoxy (inteface 2), running at 4A for several hours in a test. Nothing bad happened.
> With a better thermal contact, and a bigger heatsink or a fan, there should be no problem at all.



8 AMPS???

On an LED that is designed to take 2.8 amps with propper heatsinking?

So your saying that if I get a solid copper heatsink, and mount the P7 with arctic silver epoxy, it should run @ 8 amps consistently without burning up?


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## bshanahan14rulz (Apr 28, 2010)

thread necromancy :duh2:

but, yeah, that would be 2A per die, feasible.


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## IMSabbel (Apr 28, 2010)

SmurfTacular said:


> 8 AMPS???
> 
> On an LED that is designed to take 2.8 amps with propper heatsinking?
> 
> So your saying that if I get a solid copper heatsink, and mount the P7 with arctic silver epoxy, it should run @ 8 amps consistently without burning up?



Well, they do. 
Just like years ago cree would not spec the XR-E for anything but 350mA and people were pushing them to 1.5A

They DO start to blue, and i would guess the lifetime would only be in double digit hours at that drive current, but there are no non-thermal issues present (bonding wires, current distribution, etc).

I had that P7 around for quite some time because i never bothered to remove the star from the heatsink. Finally killed it back in february by running it at 6+A submerged in liquid nitrogen.

You could hear the die crack


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## COAST (Apr 28, 2010)

Haha..... I use an IMR 18650 and power my P7 DD..... only one P7 remaining :devil:.....


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