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LED constant current driver 80 Watt?

CocaCola

Apr 7, 2012
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My turn for a question, I just exhausted a few hours trying to find a suitable beast and for the life of me it is eluding me at every turn... So I'm hoping someone might have a line on a supplier...

I'm repairing an LED grow light for a client, it has two series rows consisting each of 26 3 Watt LEDs... It's running off two 650mA constant current drivers right now (encapsulated in goop, so I won't be bothered with repairing) each driver is running a row of 26 LEDs, so about 80 Watts a driver...

For the life of me I can't find any drivers similarly rated, the best I have been able to come up with is this one that will easily drive half the series and I can split the series and use two of those, but it would certainly be easier if I could find a single driver :) The guy is already going to cry at the price tag since he and I were of the opinion that it was possibly just a single blown LED taking down the series... But this is a $600 + semi custom light fixture so he is kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place now that I have identified one of the drivers took a poop...
 

GreenGiant

Feb 9, 2012
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if my math is correct here the drivers output ~120V @ 650mA? That is a toughy

My first thought is split up the LED's wiring so that you can run a higher current driver at a lower voltage (easier to find typically)
If you could get it down to something like 24V you would only need something like 3.5-4A
 

CocaCola

Apr 7, 2012
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Yep, the specifications are a tough find it appears... Probably the reason the companies charge so much for these units... I ended up just getting the two smaller drivers as it's a quick fix for now... The lights are installed on two PC boards so splitting the series in half is as easy as clippping the jumper between boards.. Not so easy to split beyond that as they are mounted on a heavy duty aluminum clad PC board that is bonded to a full length aluminum heat sink... I can certainly do it but again more hassle then it's worth...

Anyway if anyone has a line on comparable drivers to the original I'm still all ears, as I suspect he will return if another unit fails and it would be nice to have a 1:1 swap out... Someone has to have these as a commercial offering because they are clearly a mass produced item as they are sitting in a plastic housing like bellow with the socket and factory wire/strain relief removed (label removed as well, as a sloppy pour of potting inside) and just hard wired into the unit, and mounted in place with a strap...

images
 

CocaCola

Apr 7, 2012
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I need one that natively runs on 110V AC lines to be a drop in replacment... Also that one suffers the same issue @ only 55V max output it can't run the entire series string... As GG stated I need upwards of 120V out to run the string as it's originally designed... Seems that this is simply a rare beast or at least not a design route many are taking in high power LED applications...

Personally I'm not a fan of the long series strands in the first place to due one LEDs ability to kill then entire strip and in this case take down half the light fixture, but I didn't design it :)
 

CocaCola

Apr 7, 2012
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Nothing is ever easy, the drivers came in but because I'm only driving 13 LEDs, I'm not meeting the minimum forward voltage (or at least I'm right on the threshold) for the LED driver to stabilize... I don't have the LED specs so I could only estimate or guess at what the forward voltage was, and I had a limited number of options in the driver category anyway... Anyway the driver goes into an annoying error mode and flashes the LEDs, since I'm on the threshold it teeters between flash and solid on...

Not a huge issue I'm just going to load it down with a few 1n4004 diodes (since I have them on hand and they are a cheap solution) just another one of those 5 minute projects that ends up taking an hour...

So word of advice when shopping for these solid state drivers, make sure your LED series draws a happy amount of voltage or else :)
 
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