Thanks for various people's useful comments on Luxeon design.
Here is a summary of key Luxeon literature. All this is on their site 
but this ties it together in one place.
This should help make other people's wanderings a little shorter.

One could summarise basic Luxeon design by as simple a statement as 
"Operate at never ever more than rated current, heatsink adequately to 
always maintain *junction* below 90 C, read data sheets for colour 
matching and radiation patterns".   There's more to it than that, but 
that's a good start.

FWIW Lumileds is owned by my two favourite electronics giants. 
(Fortunately the opto group ended up (as one would expect :-) ) 
aligned with the light side of the force when the ancestor of one of 
the two giants split).



        RM

_____________________________

The following design guides and related notes from Lumiled are (to a 
variable extent) required reading for would be Luxeon designers.

If you could have only 1 Luxeon document, this would be it.
Datasheet for a wide range of 1 watt modules with info on mechanical, 
optical, thermal and electrical characteristics.

        http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/DS23.pdf


Thermal design.        Vital

        http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/AB05.PDF

Let your light so shine ...
Lumen maintenance for white Luxeon LEDS.
Light weight but useful - basically, keep it cool

        http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/AB07.PDF

Thermal considerations for 5 watt modules.
Nasty stuff. Heat sinks many times larger than the LEDs.
For compact hand held designs forced air cooling looks desirable.
A torch with a fan! :-(

        http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/protected/AB23.PDF

Luxeon flashlight design guide
Lighter weight than could be but useful

        http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/DR02.PDF

Custom design guide
While this is notionally written for those who want to design their 
own emitter for Lumileds to make, it gives substantial insight into 
all relevant aspects of existing standard products. Extremely 
worthwhile reading for the serious designer.

        http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/AB12.PDF


36 page Future Active / Lumileds combined "all in one design guide"
Lots of marketing and waffle but also much extremely valuable data in 
one place.
On page 6 there is a "Spectral energy locus" colour chart that allows 
you to tell what colour you can expect from various combinations of 
emitters of given wavelengths. This is immensely valuable for people 
wanting to produce ranges of colours from multiple emitters. As I do 
:-)
The chart was derived empirically in 1931.
eg a 460 nanometre (blue) emitter and 620 nanometre (red) emitter will 
by themselves NEVER combine to make white but a 460 and a 580 (orange) 
will.

        http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/PG01_America.PDF

Luxeon collimator.    Worth knowing about.

        http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/protected/DS26.PDF

Buy your (perhaps literally) red hot Luxeon products here
Online buying and, perhaps more usefully, part number and 
characteristics cross reference table.
Shopping cart takes you to Future Active for tube quantity purchases.

        http://www.lumileds.com/products/rd_order.cfm


-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist