LEDENGIN 10W soldering problems

[dazzlah]

For some reason I always have problems soldering the Ledengin stars... the pads are not sticky enough for some reason. Any other LED star has never been an issue. I have tried adding rosin to no avail. Is there a trick to this? Their pads are definitely a different material than Luxeon and Seoul stars. I am sure I have destroyed my new 10W start trying to get it wired.

Help me CSS Forum. You are my only hope.

[cardcollector]

Well, there are three things I do when soldering to a LEDengine/Rebel LED....

1. scuff the pads lightly with 600ish sandpaper. This will allow the Solder something to "grab" onto.

2. Make sure my iron is HOT and the tip clean. A hot iron will allow the pad to heat up quickly and the solder be accepted onto the pad. A 5 second dab MAX while feeding solder onto said pad should work fine. If not, you need to get a hotter iron. I had a nice standard non adjustable iron in the beginning, and it was a pain to wire rebels as it would just barely get hot enough.

3. Tin the pad, the wire, then solder them together, don't try to get solder to attach to the pad, the wire, and combine them together in one sweep. Take each portion at a time.

[FenderBender]

http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...e....for-noobs

[Ben Elion]

In my opinion and as statement from my wife, who is an electronic technician with certificates in SMD and other solder techniques, the Ledengin PCB is the worst thing we ever had to solder.
The pads come off quite easy when you have to desolder them.
You have to heat it up too much, the pads don´t take the solder very good and so it is nearly impossible to get a professional solder point on them, even with a professional solder station and the skills to do it right.
Don´t get me wrong, you can put a wire on it, but the connection isn´t very good.
In the time we solder one pad on the Ledengin, we can finish a Cree RGBW wiring with all colours used and have perfect solder points on every pad.

Beside from this, I miss the possibility to order a specific binning.
Had one month delay on my order now because the supplier had to return two shipments, because of very bad brightness results.

The brightness of the Ledengins is excellent (when you got the right bin), but I won´t use them regularly.

[Caine Drathul]

In my opinion and as statement from my wife, who is an electronic technician with certificates in SMD and other solder techniques, the Ledengin PCB is the worst thing we ever had to solder.
The pads come off quite easy when you have to desolder them.
You have to heat it up too much, the pads don´t take the solder very good and so it is nearly impossible to get a professional solder point on them, even with a professional solder station and the skills to do it right.
Don´t get me wrong, you can put a wire on it, but the connection isn´t very good.
In the time we solder one pad on the Ledengin, we can finish a Cree RGBW wiring with all colours used and have perfect solder points on every pad.

Beside from this, I miss the possibility to order a specific binning.
Had one month delay on my order now because the supplier had to return two shipments, because of very bad brightness results.

The brightness of the Ledengins is excellent (when you got the right bin), but I won´t use them regularly.

I 100% totally understand your frustration. I ruined a 10W BBBB close to a year ago and it REALLY put me off on them until recently, when I knew that I needed to have it for my next setup. Fender's tutorial is what saved me - period. I was able to make it happen (and was it a pain still? YES, it was. I had to try several times and I was following his guide to a tee). I suggest to just take a breath, and walk away...come back when you're ready and keep trying. Good luck.

[Wong Yoon Wei]

What does one do when the pad comes off? The PCB is ruined? I am curious cause my next order will be LEDENGINE RGGB.

[Ben Elion]

I 100% totally understand your frustration. I ruined a 10W BBBB close to a year ago and it REALLY put me off on them until recently, when I knew that I needed to have it for my next setup. Fender's tutorial is what saved me - period. I was able to make it happen (and was it a pain still? YES, it was. I had to try several times and I was following his guide to a tee). I suggest to just take a breath, and walk away...come back when you're ready and keep trying. Good luck.

It is not only frustration and we had it running before.
But I wasn´t satisfied with the colour and wanted to switch from B+G to B+W.
When I was desoldering the pad from the serial bridge, the pad came off.
That can happen, but in this case you´ll have to heat the PCB too much until the solder is flowing.

I know these LEDs have a big fandom especially in the US, because they´re quite easy to get and quite cheap there.
And the worst thing, there´s no alternative for these LEDs at the moment.
The Cree RGBW comes near, but for RGGB or RGBA there is no other option.
That´s why I want to spread a little constructive criticism on these, because I want them to be improved.
The saber community is just a small number of customers for Ledengin, but maybe with Tim stocking them, we have a chance to communicate with them through him.
And as far as I know, there are only two partners where the dies are mounted on the PCB.
One in Asia one in the US.
Why don´t they just use these:
http://www.led-mounting-bases.com/ca...d_category=113


@Wong Yoon Wei
When the pad comes off this can´t be repaired, the colour is unusable then, but you still can use the other colours.

Happy New Year,

Old Ben

[FenderBender]

Wow.

I have had, and sometimes still have an LED here or there that frustrates me to no end. However, after MANY of these used, I have yet (knock on wood) to have a pad come off and I have desoldered quite a few. I also very seldom get a cold weld, and most of the time get beautiful flow. The Cree RGBW, just doesn't compare to the LEDengin RGBW at all. I don't care what bin you get. If you got a bin that didn't seem bright, it's most likely that you got a higher VF bin and weren't getting it enough juice. I do agree that for solid colors, being able to choose bins would be ideal, but even with Luxeons you had to order thousands to be able to do that. For the multi-colors choosing bins is pointless as you're going to be mixing the dice most of the time anyway, so choosing bins based on color shade is pointless, and brightness/power bins would be too difficult to categorize.

We are in direct contact with LEDengin constantly, and they do look for feedback. We have given it. We may see some changes, we may not. Who knows. Believe it or not, they are still a fairly small company in the grand scheme of things, and resources are being used to expand their market share and further refine their product. The LEDs themselves are getting better and more efficient, and the newer ones that are shipping now do seem to be more consistent. Even with the tips and tricks that I have learned, sometimes one of them frustrates me to the point that I gaze longingly at my 3# sledge. But I resist, and carry on. Just take some deep breaths and go back at it. I am in the hundreds used now of these things, and for our purposes there is nothing else better right now.

[Ben Elion]

Ok,
I have two Ledengins here, which I ordered from TCSS December last year.
One RGBA, one RGBW and had three pads in total (especially the smaller ones) coming off.
It may happen because we had no experience with them, but after having big troubles with the first one, I searched for advice and found your tutorial.
Even with this it had been very very hard to do it.
This just hasn´t to be like this.
Why there are no such problems with all the other LEDs I have soldered?
P4, Luxeon, Huey Jann, Cree all finished without a single problem.
Only the Ledengin PCB is giving these headaches.

I thought there are voltage binnings for Ledengins too, but it seems I mixed s.th. up.
But there are definitive Luminous Flux binnings, where you could choose higher lumens even for multicoloured dies:
http://www.ledengin.com/files/dist/10wLZ/LZ4-00MA10.pdf Page 4.
For example F for higher blue output, M for higher green output for the RGBA.

[FenderBender]

Well, I don't know what to tell you at this point. Most of us in this hobby would rather put up with a little bit of a pain in the arse for much brighter results at the same cost as any other solution. If you have a suggestion, I would send it to LEDengin directly. Tim has gone through the trouble of getting a distributorship for these and offers them at a better price and availability than anywhere else. So, I wouldn't complain here, but rather take up any issues with LEDengin.

There are skills that are developed in this hobby to do different things, not everything is going to be easy. There are those who have borked soundboards, and those of us who haven't. Same with anything else. It's one reason smiths charge what they do (or should).

So they're not as easy as a P4 to solder to. So what? They really aren't THAT difficult though. I hope you aren't trying to solder to them on a heatsink, that would be inadvisable. If it is truly that hard to solder to, then for you, maybe you should stick with the Cree? I dunno.