Would like to make some displays with LEDs and was after some suggestions about the best places to get them from ? In particular after 5mm LEDS, nice high brightness ones of different colours. Ive seen plenty of places on the web with varying prices - can anyone comment which makes are best and which to keep away from ?
I remember LEDS always used to pretty much last forever but have noticed increasingly that in some consumer products they seem to be dying early.....
Of various dubious quality and sources of course. If the OP is serious about getting and specing quality known LEDs then you have to go to the quality suppliers like Farnell, Digikey Mouser etc. Quality brands are the likes of Kingbright, Vishay, Avago to name a few. If you buy from Jaycar/DSE/Futurlec/ebay etc it's just a lucky-dip, you get whatever fell off the Shenzen truck last week.
Dave.
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:geoff wrote: :> Criminal wrote: :>> Good Morning, :>>
:>>
:>> Would like to make some displays with LEDs and was after some :>> suggestions about the best places to get them from ? In particular :>> after 5mm LEDS, nice high brightness ones of different colours. Ive :>> seen plenty of places on the web with varying prices - can anyone :>> comment which makes are best and which to keep away from ? :>>
:>> I remember LEDS always used to pretty much last forever but have :>> noticed increasingly that in some consumer products they seem to be :>> dying early..... :>
:>
:> Even DSE still stock a wide variety of LEDs. Well, last time I looked :> anyway .... : :Of various dubious quality and sources of course. :If the OP is serious about getting and specing quality known LEDs then you :have to go to the quality suppliers like Farnell, Digikey Mouser etc. :Quality brands are the likes of Kingbright, Vishay, Avago to name a few. :If you buy from Jaycar/DSE/Futurlec/ebay etc it's just a lucky-dip, you get :whatever fell off the Shenzen truck last week. : :Dave.
In both the DSE's that I go to locally - even their LED display board (display unit with each type of LED lit and a momentary action toggle switch you can use to bring them to full brightness to "try before you buy") has several examples failed - and not fixed. Hardly a good advertisement.
Have bought a couple of the bags of standard LEDS (100 pack) from DSE for general use, used about 70% of them so far and had no trouble with them, but the last lot I got would have been 2006-7 or so.
I wouldn't trust the high brightness LEDs though from the cheap sources.
I have heard many complaints of even high spec, higher brightness category of LED's failing prematurely, and for no obvious reason. Even running them well under published specs doesn't seem to help extend their lives. Everywhere where I see LED traffic lights, its quite usual to see a significant number of blown LED's in them. The "turn arrow" ones seem more reliable for some reason.
For this reason, if you want high brightness / high performance LEDS, especially in a critical application I agree you should not cut corners.
EBAY is the place to go for almost any kind of LED related stuff IMHO. Most suppliers are direct mainland chinese based and they seem to be building a technological base of manufacturing and development as well. They are producing "Lumiled Like" high power leds, but also have an impressive lineup of lesser power leds in all the usual colors, red, green, blue, white (both phospher based as well as "soft white" RGB multichip non-phospher types), yellow, UV, and so on. They are the only place I've found 5-chip ultra bright white leds (100ma). They are quickly developing "off the shelf" product applications like spotlight/floodlight replacements, T-8 fluorescent replacements, panel meters, smd backlighting, etc. Along with this is a bunch of "less useful" applications that usually don't continue to be offered if they don't sell. I think they are just trying to conceive of uses no matter how crazy, and are "throwing them at the wall and keeping what 'sticks'". Topping it all off, shipping is free most places and they ship as fast as anyone via mail. The LEDs they manufacture are world class, IMHO. They are also only a fraction of the cost of the "non-chinese" equivilents. regards, Joe.
On Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:53:42 -0700 (PDT), Criminal wrote:
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