sli-pro broken bulb help

  • Thread starter Thread starter Supperslicks
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Drop'd my sli-pro and broke the last bulb on the top row :(
Does anybody know were i can get a replacement bulb from, They look easy enough to replace
What kind are they, and what watt? are they?
I have try'd sending email to leo, but i get no reply
Any help plz guys
regards
Engage
 
they are 5mm super bright/high intensity LED
(right side) Blue
(left ) green
i don' know how you get the broken one off there, i guess is de-soldering it off the pcb and solder the new one back on. but carefull of how high the heat is. use variable heat solder .
and start at low heat.
img_2610.jpeg


See ^^^ the 2 points on top of the USB plug (very tiny) that is where the right side LED is as you know already.
I would get a solder suction pen . but from looking at the tiny solder point and microscopic circuit path. I would be very very careful. get someone who is very good at this and let them do it right.
 
As for getting a replacement, RS components or Farnell are international companies with huge ranges of parts, if you can't find it at either of their sites then it doesn't exist. Well it's either that or their bizarre layouts got the better of you and you gave up looking, they are extremely confusing that way.

To de-solder an LED isn't that big of a job, it's only two pins after all. I recommend that if you do want to do it yourself, don't be fooled into thinking a low temperature is a good thing because it's not the temperature that's the problem, it's how long you apply the temperature, and if you go for 320 degrees C or something ridiculous then you'll have to apply that heat far longer than you'd have to apply 360 degrees. You might not damage the PCB and the LED doesn't matter as it's dead anyway (not sure how you broke an LED by dropping it, did one of the pins snap or something?), but PCB tracks are good thermal conductors and you might end up reflowing a different pin or otherwise damaging a component on the same tracks as the LED, but as I said, if you go for about 360 degrees you'll be fine.

Another thing I do when desoldering is to apply some fresh fluxed solder to the joint, this likely uses silver solder with no flux in it at all, meaning that it takes a long, long time to heat up enough (because it's silver) and doesn't flow even when it is heated (because it has no flux). Adding a small amount of fluxed lead-tin solder means you can heat it up much faster and it will all flow much more nicely, but really if you do this you should have some desolder braid on hand to mop up any solder left over from desoldering the LED because it's generally not a great idea to mix silver and lead solder, not because it's unsafe but more because they aren't really supposed to mix.

Finally, when it actually comes to desoldering the LED, you just heat one leg, apply force to pull it away from the board (you have to make sure the solder has melted before you apply said force, of course, and don't apply too much force), heat the other leg and apply force, and repeat. You might burn yourself a little but that's just part of the fun, and you will find it's difficult to begin with (because the LED is probably sitting flush on the surface of the PC with very little room to move) but once you get it going it'll come a lot faster.

I have no idea how hard this would be for a beginner with a cheap, cheap soldering iron, but if you're in the UK feel free to send me the board and replacement LED and I'll do it for you (for free) if you like. Trust me, I am a doctor.
 
I'd go with THAT ^^ option superslick, Im no expert with solder, as advised earlier, let someone who done it often or have a number of experience with solder like neema, if I were you :).I just hate wasting £100 worth of sli-pro because of my soldering skills lol
and lastly good luck to both of you .
 
The bulb snaped of after i droped it, whitch left the pins still inplace i managed to remove the pins, and i found replacment led, But it seems that after replacing the led it still didnt work, so im thinking that its something more wrong with the unit now, not the led
The only work around, i can do, was to Wire it so the Last led, the one i replaced, now runs of the 12th led
So in pratice, The 12th and 13th led's now both light up at the same time
But this is better than having no 13th led at all, And its a lot better than having to splash out on another 100+ pounds for a new sli-pro :)
Thanks for all the help guys
 
Make sure the LED is the right way around also, it is a diode and doesn't work backwards.
 
nope its round the right way, I made sure of that, held the sli-pro upto light to check
Also the 2 pins on the led One is longer than the other, that also tell me witch way round they go
But still dont work, but like i said in my last post i can live with the last 2 led's working at the same time
regards
Josh
 
If the polarity is correct then it must be an open circuit, your LED is the wrong spec or something else fell off or was damaged when you dropped it.

Things to check:
- That the flat side of your LED is on the same side as all the others (the flat side shows the cathode (negative side) of the LED). I can't really work out how holding the board up to a light to check tells you what the polarity is, and you also said that one pin is longer than the other which tells you which way round it goes... How? Sure, if you knew which way round the other LEDs are then of course that would help, but how can you tell which way round the other LEDs are? I'm assuming the pins on the existing LEDs have been cut to the same length so how can you tell? I am assuming you don't know anything about electronics, though, which may be unfair but it's nothing personal and it's the only safe assumption to make in cases like these.
- There aren't any open circuits (missing components, lifted tracks, cut tracks, lifted IC pins)
- There aren't any closed circuits either (solder bridges)
- Check the voltages across the other LEDs and compare it to the voltage across yours. If you don't have a multimeter you can't really do this, but that's probably the first thing I'd do because then you can work out the current draw and therefore work out exactly what spec LED you need.

That said, I don't know how you chose your replacement LED, Leo might've gotten in touch to tell you the manufacturer and part number or something, but if you just guessed then there are a huge array of things that need to be considered. It's unlikely, however, that Leo used highly expensive, rare as hen's teeth specialised LEDs, but you never know. And if yours isn't working then it's something to check.
 
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