Just to give you some idea of the heat these guys can generate, I'm using a 1.813"(Fins) X .95" X 32" aluminum heatsink. Its a pretty large piece of metal, I have 10 CREE XP-Gs on them and with the dimmers set at 50% they stay room temp, 65%+ and they get really hot fast. I'm talking cooking eggs hot, hospital grade burns. The drivers are 1.3A with the LEDs supporting a max of 1.5A.
I've pretty much stopped using any LEDs over .750mA, just too much heat to the heatsink for my applications.
I've avoided the screw-in/thermal route by using thermal pads, double sided thermal tape basically and just love them.
I've never tried using an LED without a lense so I can't help there. One odd note, the Phillips lenses were so much easier to mount than the CREE lenses. About 1 in 5 of the CREE lenses have excess plastic inside that makes mounting them a pain.
I started out just playing with them but the results were so nice and the energy usage was so much less than the T5/CFLs I have that I'm replacing all my lighting with LEDs as they burn out. I have some rambling with the math around here somewhere. It is an upfront cost to save over the years, assuming your LEDs make it to the break even point. According to the specs they should easily do that and still have over 50% of there life left.
I have to agree with AV the LEDs I bought last year already have a new model out.
I've pretty much stopped using any LEDs over .750mA, just too much heat to the heatsink for my applications.
I've avoided the screw-in/thermal route by using thermal pads, double sided thermal tape basically and just love them.
I've never tried using an LED without a lense so I can't help there. One odd note, the Phillips lenses were so much easier to mount than the CREE lenses. About 1 in 5 of the CREE lenses have excess plastic inside that makes mounting them a pain.
I started out just playing with them but the results were so nice and the energy usage was so much less than the T5/CFLs I have that I'm replacing all my lighting with LEDs as they burn out. I have some rambling with the math around here somewhere. It is an upfront cost to save over the years, assuming your LEDs make it to the break even point. According to the specs they should easily do that and still have over 50% of there life left.
I have to agree with AV the LEDs I bought last year already have a new model out.