How to Construct LED Lights

There are many aspects that must be considered when building LED lights. In this article, industrial COB LED chip supplier will give you some tips on how to build an LED fixture and what things must be considered.

There are five steps in designing LED lights:

Definition of lighting requirements; how much light is needed in a specific environment/space.

Define some design constraints and special requirements, such as those related to optics or high-temperature resistance.

Optical, thermal, or electrical design.

Then calculate the number of LED components based on the lumens defined in the specification.

Finally, all components used to manufacture the final luminaire or first-stage prototype must be defined and specified.

In this article, we will focus on the last step, how to construct LED lights from lighting components, rather than the step-by-step lamp design process itself.

When you build a luminaire from lighting components, the first thing to determine is which LED to use in the luminaire. There are basically three different options:

High power COB LED

Mid-power LEDs

Low-power SMD LED diodes.

In this article, I divide the options into two groups: high power COB LEDs and medium and low power LEDs, which are usually SMD-LED components.

When a large luminous output is required, high-power LED options often become a problem. Under a typical current, the luminous flux ranges from about 100 lumens to 13,000 lumens, and under the maximum operating conditions, the luminous flux even reaches nearly 20,000 lumens. When using COB-LEDs to build lamps, they must be far away from COB-LEDs for high power density in a small area, so some kind of thermal management is required. In the light-emitting area of about 8.5cm2, the power density can reach 22w/cm2. Many times the price target sets a cooling limit, and active cooling methods cannot be used. This requires the use of passive thermal management. In other words, you need some kind of heat sink. Typical materials are aluminum alloys with fin-like structures to increase the overall surface area of the radiator element. In addition, a thermal paste or other thermal interface material is inserted between the LED and the heat sink to increase the heat transfer from the LED to the heat sink and finally to the main body of the lamp.

Of course, you also need an LED driver to feed electric current to the COB. When it comes to COB LEDs, many times you can only drive one or two LEDs with the same driver.

In addition to COB LEDs and LED drivers, you may also need some optical components, such as lenses or reflectors, to improve the light quality of the lamps. The current fed to your COB LED can be achieved by soldering wires to the COB or using a special socket or connector to power the LED.