I'm working on an LED driver for a car headlight project. The target current for the LED's is 3A, but during testing, I never saw more than 2.1 amps.
The LED current limit is set by a current sense resistor with a value of 0.025 ohms.
Since the circuit is on a breadboard right now, I consider myself lucky the circuit works at all, and even luckier that the current is as close to the target as it is. But this got me thinking, what steps do I need to take to account for resistance in the PCB traces? Can I somehow adjust the current sense resistor after the circuit is assembled? A pot? or select the value of the resistor after I can do measurements on the actual board? Otherwise, it seems like there would be too many variables to account for to hit the target current on the money without some adjustment after assembly.
Thanks for the help
Schematic:
U1 is an LM3421
Rcs is current limit
Rsense is target current