Monday, 30 January 2017

led - What is the purpose of star pcb?


I'm fairly new to electronics, and I was recently looking at some LEDs listed for sale online. Some LEDs were mounted on "star pcb":


LEDs on star PCBs


From the picture, it looks like there are 6 connections. I'm pretty sure the LEDs just have 2 (an anode and a cathode).


Can someone explain the purpose of the other connections, or what the star shape pcb is used for? I tried googling, but all I could seem to find were more star pcb items for sale.



Answer



I assume you are looking at a unit such as this: Digikey link. The "circuit board" is actually a heat-sink heat-spreader to draw away the heat from the LED module in the middle. As you can see in the photograph, half of the pads are labeled + (anode) and the other half are labeled - (cathode). So yes, there are actually only two terminals.


[Edit: changed "heat-sink" to "heat-spreader", acknowledging Conner Wolf's correction.]


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