Demo: Soldering an HB LED to its aluminum substrate/heatsink with a heat gun

Here’s a nice video from Steve Dahl of Digikey showing how you can use a heat gun to solder high-brightness LEDs to an aluminum substrate heat sink. In the demo he uses a Steinel programmable heat gun set at 620°F (these sell for about $300), and dabs on the solder paste with a needle/syringe applicator. After applying the heat and showing how some of the solder blobs out, he flicks the excess solder off, leaving a very clean-looking joint. (He also emphasizes that this is not following any LED manufacturer’s spec, and is for lab/prototyping purposes only.)

If you like hands-on demos of LED technology and applications, plan to attend EDN’s next Designing with LEDs Workshop in the Chicago area on October 6, which, by the way, you can now register for. We had some great papers and panel discussion at our inaugural event last April which we’ll be building on for the Chicago Workshop.

 [Via Adafruit.]