Don't know what I did wrong?

[Nihilus]

I am finishing a Darth Malak Saber for a friend and decided to go LED. I have made over 20 EL sabers; but never an LED. I got the Build Your Own Luxeon III Electronics Kit in RED/ORANGE. I soldered wire to the + and - poles. then put the 2.2ohm 5w resistor on the Positive wire; then to the positive pole of the switch. Both poles of the switch were positive. The negitive to the negitive pole of the 4 AA batteries, Positive to the positive pole. It light perfect!!! But after only 1 hour, with it only being turned on for short times; POOF.. No more LED?? I am stumped. Any help?
Thanks,
NI

[Jay-gon Jinn]

Strange...sounds like the wiring was right, was the led mounted to a heatsink?

[xwingband]

What is the saber made of? MHS?

Mayhaps it grounded out.

[Nihilus]

The Saber is made of MHS Parts and it was attached to a heat sink, but I had not put heat shrink on it yet and the wires may have touched the sides. I just never had that problem with EL. I will remember to be more carefull when mounting LED Components.
Thanks All,
NI

[Jay-gon Jinn]

This is also a common problem with the red family of Luxeons. they sometimes ground themselves against the heatsink and quit working. A non-conductive cpu heatsink paste helps eliminate the problem.

[Nihilus]

Thanks Millions for your help. I will put a non conductive heat sink on the next one I get. I was very impressed with the light intensity; even though it was short lived.

[Obi-Dar Ke-Gnomie]

Something else you might do to help is to put a plastic sleeve inside your hilt to keep things safer. I found a club sleeve from an old golf bag fits perfectly inside the MHS, and is nice and thin so it doesn't take up much of your precious inside diameter.

[Novastar]

And don't feel bad about it Darth Nihilus... Corbin ran into this problem a TON of times when building the staff for BOP I... it didn't make much sense, but one of the red-O LEDs was grounding out and dying...

So, after contacting someone at Lumileds--he found out that yes... the red and red-o Luxeons ARE made a bit differently, and can ground out to the heatsink base. Weird that the design is ONLY this way for the reds (I believe).

The worst is having to go through a bunch of LEDs to discover it!

Additionally... when I was wiring up the staff for BOP II... even though I used non-conductive tape under the LEDs just above the heatsink (so as to prevent grounding from the LED star base)... one of the 2 LEDs kept shutting off instantly whenever I turned them both on. Two different circuits too.

What happened... was that the SWITCHES for both circuits were touching (slightly)... since I had placed them right next to one another... and so:

THE LEDS WERE GROUNDING OUT THROUGH THE SWITCH BODIES/CASINGS!

How ridiculous is *that*??! At least--to track down! It took me many hours to figure out THAT one. Geez.

[Eandori]

As of right now, around 6 months after I started working with Red Luxeons I have fried 2 of them because of this stupid heatsink-Positive anode problem. It's really stupid. I was being very careful every time too.

One time as I pushed my batteries into the saber tube, the plastic covering over my battery was ripped off by a small piece of metal hanging from a drilled hole. The outside of a battery is ground, so the LED had a complete circuit. When I powered up the saber extra current as sent through the saber body, into the LED, and into my CF board. Frying one of the components on the board. I had to get another chip form Erv' and solder it on to fix it.

The second time something similar happened. As I was screwing together the completed saber, a solder joint popped off on my 3-pin battery plug and shorted the battery to the hilt of the saber. When I powered on current again shot through that red LED because of the defect. I didn't damage my CF board that time... but the red LED was toast.

On a separate note, I fried another 4 luxeons while helping Erv' test out all the configuration settings on the CF 2.5 board. So I lost LED's, but I was able to help him catch bugs

[Nihilus]

That is great; about the golf club holders. I have about 20 of them here. I will be very careful with the replacement LED's.
Thanks again,
NI