I need to drive high power uv leds QLUV07M3QCV which are 3.7V 700mA.
I have a 24V power source, so at first I went for the simple route and I put 5 of those in serie with 7.8Ohm 5W resistors. It was working find with my bench supply with 700mA current limit.
But the power supply I use on the machine is not precise enough and it did overshoot enough (to around 25V) for my test PCB to burn (I was wearing UV safety glasses and I noticed too late, my LEDs were burned and they cost a fortune).
I think I should drive them individually because their forward voltage varies about 10% which causes a significant error on a strip of 5 (of course, I realized all this after burning everything).
I need to drive high power uv leds QLUV07M3QCV which are 3.7V 700mA.
I have a 24V power source, so at first I went for the simple route and I put 5 of those in serie with 7.8Ohm 5W resistors. It was working find with my bench supply with 700mA current limit.
But the power supply I use on the machine is not precise enough and it did overshoot enough (to around 25V) for my test PCB to burn (I was wearing UV safety glasses and I noticed too late, my LEDs were burned and they cost a fortune).
I think I should drive them individually because their forward voltage varies about 10% which causes a significant error on a strip of 5 (of course, I realized all this after burning everything).
This doesn't make sense.
If you have a power supply with a 700mA current limit, that is half decent, it will limit the current to 700mA. Does not matter if you set the voltage to 25V, does not matter what the LED forward voltage variation is.
Even if you set it as 25V, with no current limit, the 7.8 ohm series resistor should limit current to about 830mA.
Something else went wrong here.
Did you let it sit for a long time and overheat without adequate heatsinking?
The resistors is dissipating ~5W, the LEDs are dissipating ~10W.
10W is a lot of power for a PCB, from the LEDs alone, even ignoring the resistor. Is it an aluminum PCB?