-
Folks, if you've recently upgraded or renewed your annual club membership but it's still not active, please reach out to the BOD or a moderator. The PayPal system has a slight bug which it doesn't allow it to activate the account on it's own.
Apollo LED Issue
- Thread starter redfishbluefish
- Start date
Well I opened up the second Apollo, thinking that I only had maybe 15 LED's to replace. Found that all the blue LEDs (40 of them) were melted. The LEDs would still light, but the lens portions were melted off. Here's the entire board, where you can see the 40 charred LEDs, while the 15 white ones are fine (although one white is not lighting for some reason.)
And here's a close up of a burnt LED, where you can see the "lens" is just gone.
So I just placed another order for 50 more LEDs....which are coming from China, and will take a number of weeks to get here. In the mean time, I've un-soldered all the burnt blues and cleaned off the old compound.
Not surprisingly, when I pull off the aluminum cooling fins on the back of the plate, the thermal compound was grossly insufficient and very poorly distributed. I'm pretty sure this is a big reason for the melting of these LEDs.
I'm going to repeat, for any other Apollo owners out there.......Open up your fixture(s) and pull off the aluminum fins, clean off the original compound and replace with new compound. For this second fixture I'm using THIS compound....Arctic Silver Ceramique 2. I believe a single syringe (25 g) of this particular compound would do one fixture. I'll find out soon enough.
And here's a close up of a burnt LED, where you can see the "lens" is just gone.
So I just placed another order for 50 more LEDs....which are coming from China, and will take a number of weeks to get here. In the mean time, I've un-soldered all the burnt blues and cleaned off the old compound.
Not surprisingly, when I pull off the aluminum cooling fins on the back of the plate, the thermal compound was grossly insufficient and very poorly distributed. I'm pretty sure this is a big reason for the melting of these LEDs.
I'm going to repeat, for any other Apollo owners out there.......Open up your fixture(s) and pull off the aluminum fins, clean off the original compound and replace with new compound. For this second fixture I'm using THIS compound....Arctic Silver Ceramique 2. I believe a single syringe (25 g) of this particular compound would do one fixture. I'll find out soon enough.
James, if I'm not mistaken, I believe you have newer Apollos that have pots (potentiometers) to allow dimming. I don't have that feature and therefore believe THIS four wire driver would work for me....but that's a guess, because there are no labels on anything in my fixtures. If you have pots, this driver won't work for you.....you have either six or eight wires coming out of your driver. What I'd suggest for you is to open it up and see if you have labels. I know some of the newer Apollos actually had Mean Well drivers. Hopefully yours will have labels and make the replacement easy. Either way, if you need assistance, let me know. I have all the solder stuff if you need the new power supply soldered in. Even if you're uncertain about opening it up, I could help. Let me know.
FYI, for comparison, here's the guts of my Apollo:
FYI, for comparison, here's the guts of my Apollo:
The second batch of 50 blue LEDs arrived today. I soldered in the 40 new LEDs and applied the Arctic Silver Ceramique 2 thermal compound on the finned aluminum. I did this by first distributing the compound over the plate.
By the way, one $7 tube (25g), of this compound does the two plates in a fixture.
I then spread this compound around like icing a cake. Now this is what the proper amount of compound looks like on one of these plates.
So I'm now back to where I started......two Apollo's working properly over my tank! Wooo Hooo!
I still have another eBay China fixture coming in some time this week and I now want to pull apart the TauTronics and see what's wrong with that.
By the way, one $7 tube (25g), of this compound does the two plates in a fixture.
I then spread this compound around like icing a cake. Now this is what the proper amount of compound looks like on one of these plates.
So I'm now back to where I started......two Apollo's working properly over my tank! Wooo Hooo!
I still have another eBay China fixture coming in some time this week and I now want to pull apart the TauTronics and see what's wrong with that.
James, go back and look closely......it's a Picasso of a group of nude women wearing white makeup with a white background....just standing around. Now don't look at it for too long....you'll go blind!
James, I aim to please. And I promise I won't tell your wife your were gawking at a bunch of nude women today.
Art it was art.
http://www.njreefers.org/showthread.php?75608-Apollo-Reef-LED-s-anyone-have-them/page8 George took his apart to show the insides.
And George's Apollo has Mean Well drivers that wouldn't work for me....not the way my LED's are wired. Also, George's Apollo's were controllable by his Reef Angle....and I know he worked with the folks at Apollo to work out the bugs. Accordingly, I'm pretty sure these exact drivers would not work in your pot-controlled fixture.
George's guts
George's guts
Yes the ELN-60-48D is a particular dimmer controller ...I suspect mine might be a ELN-60-48P....have to get home to take it apart. I went on the company website to research them before I took it apart. Try to do the job as fast as possible once I take them apart. I found the above ones online for 25 bucks and 7 dollar shipping but minimum order is 50 so might have t spend a little more on Amazon. How was the setup, the same roughly?
The pattern continues, I have a reefbreeders photon with 5 blackened blue leds. Lets see how well they respond to a warranty repair..... I think cooling is the issue here too. The tiny heatsink that covers maybe 25% of the leds is not sufficient.
James I have 2 LEDs you can use until you can fix yours.
Sent from my LGLS751 using Tapatalk
You don't need the exact driver, just match the output volts and ma rating, general size and connectors.
James, I've looked for them is the past and never found anything. I'd suggest looking at Mouser HERE. What's important is Constant Current of 630 mA (or there about), and dimmable voltage of 70-120V on the Output side.
Now Apollo eventually switched over to Meanwell drivers (as seen in the photo above) with their ELN 60-48d. For this driver to work with approximately 24 LEDs, it needs to be wired in two parallel, series strings, splitting the amperage to 600mA (close enough), and I'm not sure if the old Apollos are wired up that way.
I found a power supply that would work, but can't seem to find a US supplier, and have seen reference to the fact that these power supplies are extremely expensive.
The Inventronics EUC-096S070DV(SV) would work as a replacement for your fixture....found HERE.
I'll keep looking because I know I'll eventually need one as well.
The Inventronics EUC-096S070DV(SV) would work as a replacement for your fixture....found HERE.
I'll keep looking because I know I'll eventually need one as well.
Last edited: