Grounding out, let's try and avoid it.

[xwingband]

Okay, for the first time yesterday I grounded out an Amber LED through the base. I'm not quite sure what combo of what was going on at that particular moment triggered it, but let's talk about ways of stopping it.

These Red/Amber colors are odd with their construction. I heard you can light it by putting a neg wire to the base... :shock:

What are peoples experience with this and stopping it? Thermal paste? Thermal epoxy? Thermal tape? Do any of those stop the grounding out?

I don't have tons of LEDs for this to be a major issue, but I'd love to prevent it anyway.

[scott5050]

A piece of thermal tape will stop it completely.

[DACOTA]

Do you mean like one wire to the - on the led and then the other touches the led mount/heatsink which the led is touching and you get the led slightly lit?

[xwingband]

Do you mean like one wire to the - on the led and then the other touches the led mount/heatsink which the led is touching and you get the led slightly lit?

I was reading that on a flashlight forum. Pretty scary to me...

I'll have to find some thermal tape to try. I have paste and epoxy but not the tape... go figure. :roll:

[neophyl]

Yes on the red/ambers/oranges the base of the stars are electrically connected to the cathode of the led.

This means that you could connect the positive wire up to the led as normal and the negative up to the bottom of the star (or heatsink, or sabre body if metal and not isolated) and it would light up as normal.

This can be a problem as unless you are carefull with your wiring its possible to short out the batteries/driver as the sabre casing can be negative.

I dont know why they did this with the reds as the others arent and its not good design practice.

I usually use thermal tape as its a sold peice unlike thermal adhesive which unless your very carefull can still leave a bit of the star touching the heatsink.

Also double check with a DMM before powering anything up is a good habit to get into.

[Novastar]

I absolutely have to chime in here to confirm X to the Z's problem.

YES. The Red-O, Red, and Amber constructions (of at LEAST the Lux IIIs)... are awfully strange. And like NeoP said... pretty lousy standard practice. :?

Corbin--when designing the BOP I sabers--had ALL sorts of issues wiring up the Darth Necrolosis Staff... which was running 7.2v between both of the LEDs (half for one, half for the other). The problem was that at least one kept shorting through the body, and then fed the FULL 7.2v into one of the Lux IIIs.

That is not pretty.

Poor Corbin was having nightmares with the bloody thing, burning LED after LED... and naturally I was of no use (especially a year or so ago), as I had nothing to do with wiring/soldering electronics of any kind at the time.

Corbin called up/contacted some Lumileds contacts and asked what's the buzz. They told him exactly what you are all here confirming... the strange "we'll negative/ground THESE LEDs out via the heatsink!"

I don't get it. It's like... And... and... WHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYY??!?!?!!!! WHY have tons of people frying $6 LEDs left, right, and up your blade tube? :)

Anyhow. Bizarre... but myth = busted.

Mise en garde avec cette "dark side" LEDs. Otherwise your saber WILL be on the dark side... PERMANENTLY. :shock:

[DACOTA]

This means that you could connect the positive wire up to the led as normal and the negative up to the bottom of the star (or heatsink, or sabre body if metal and not isolated) and it would light up as normal.

Wrong.It does not light up as normal its just barely flickered on,and it only does this if you connect the neg wire to the led and the pos wire to the led base.I tried before my first post both ways.Only the right way I said worked and it was with moderate power.

[neophyl]

Dacota thats because the star itself is anodised. That provides a fair amount of resistence normally due to the chemical nature. You scratch it though and you are through the oxide layer to bare metal.

As the anodised layer is clear its very hard to tell visually so its always better NOT to rely on it.

[LAN-ED-TUL]

ive been usin artic silver cpu paste, on all mine, and so far i havent had a single led blow out.

i was really careful when mountin to heatsink not to scratvh the stars undersides, maybe that helped, IDK. but so far im lucky.

now with this revelation, how will this affect a red lux 3 in the maul sabers?

i want to do a convert, later this year after the cons im goin to.

[Novastar]

The only way *I* was able to solve a Luxeon III Red-O short out thing (btw, the Li-Ion batteries SAVED the LEDs)... was to pad up the switch, which was the only thing connecting the separate circuits.

Padding the switch body prevented its metal from touching the HILT'S metal... and thus, prevented two circuits from "co-mingling".

I know, I know... that is for TWO separate circuits, and if you're not doing that--it won't be the same.

However--it's good advice for the Maul setup, which is basically.... TWWWOOOO circuits! heheh :P

[LAN-ED-TUL]

ya lost me, switch? please elaborate as im not sure what you meant by paddin the switch.

[DACOTA]

Dacota thats because the star itself is anodised. That provides a fair amount of resistence normally due to the chemical nature. You scratch it though and you are through the oxide layer to bare metal.

As the anodised layer is clear its very hard to tell visually so its always better NOT to rely on it.

So this is in response to me saying it doesnt fully light up right?Its becuase of that anodized layer that it doesnt fully light up.
But I think I'm right about the only way you can make the led do this is neg to the led and pos to the base,right?

[Aegean]

now i know whats been going on with that blasted amber led....

i've been using the quick change kit, to play around with a green lux3 and an amber one... the amber kept shorting out shutting the saber down.......

been battling that for a week now.

thanks!

[Novastar]

Yup... I'm glad X to the Z posted this thread. It should become a sticky in some fashion or another, since the bloody "dark side" colors are just.... uh... made that way.

In order to avoid the "lemming effect" with this grounding out business, it would be nice if we just told everyone outright, lol.

It's pretty hard to troubleshoot. I had to do this with the staff that *I* wired up for BOP II. Two separate circuits too. Totally independent. Or so I thought.

The switches however... the SWITCHES were side by side... touching one another. Can you BELIEVE it was grounded out via the switch body???? No joke. The metal housings of the switches touching each other and THEN touching the hilt... well anyway.

Stupid.

Man, I wish I knew the weasels who designed the Lux Red-O to work like THAT.

Weasels. :?

[LAN-ED-TUL]

so, i take it the comment above by novastar, meant the actual switch to turn it on?

[Novastar]

Correct, Lan... but I also used TWO switches, because of the following reasons:

1. Two separate circuits anyway.
2. Wanted to be able to turn on both blades separately AND with only one hand on the saber (Ray Park style?, lol)
3. Keep the switches in the center of the saber, away from Necrolosis' hands while using the saber.
4. Takes less space putting them side by side.

There are photos of it here:
http://www.thecustomsabershop.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2314

And no, that was not the 100% finished job, but you'll get the idea. So what happened was:

* With only the wiring laid out--circuits worked fine
* Put it into the hilt? Bam. One shut off.
* Took it out, looked for problems--NONE! (?)
* Put it back in. Problem = repeated

So then I did the ol' double-take and scratched my chin... and started experimenting. The solution was (how do I put this)... "padding"(?) the switches from touching each other... AND padding those from touching the hilt. Even the screw holes needed to be somewhat isolated.

It wasn't pretty. But neither is the saber really... as I was trying to make the lightest, smallest staff that I could while still going with an 18650 Li-Ion on either side.

I wish the TCSS black anodized emitters had been out at the time... but they were not... since I could have made the saber thin EVERYWHERE. :)