# Driver Linkage



## customtanks (Oct 31, 2014)

Trying to link more than 1 LED driver so i end up with 1 plug? Anyone have an idea on how to do this? 
LEDs im trying to run.

These r the drivers i need to run. The middle one is 30w an the 2 end ones r 50w each i think.
I wanna run the 2 50w together so i can have 100w but 1 power plug. Same as running flourecent lights i would guess. I already know about the build my LED kits, as u see im useing different drivers


----------



## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

Depends on the actual drivers your using. But both driver should have a pair of wires or connectors marked AC in. You simply want to run your power cord to these wires. In reality what you end up with is three wires going into each of two wire nuts. One wire from the power cord and plus one wire from each of the drivers AC input. 

I have built many LED set ups. But your pictures are confusing me especially with how you listed the wattage. What type of LED's are you using? Also what is the ratings on the LED drivers they should have a constant ma rating which will determine the true wattage that LED's will be consuming. the wattage rating on the Drivers is the max that they can handle and not necessarily the amount that will used. Actually I do not like to push a driver any higher than 90% of its max rating. 

Different LED's will also use different amounts of power at various ma levels. This is why we need to know exactly what LED's your running. Again it is not advisable to run the LED at there maximum rating.


----------



## customtanks (Oct 31, 2014)

TropTrea said:


> Depends on the actual drivers your using. But both driver should have a pair of wires or connectors marked AC in. You simply want to run your power cord to these wires. In reality what you end up with is three wires going into each of two wire nuts. One wire from the power cord and plus one wire from each of the drivers AC input.
> 
> I have built many LED set ups. But your pictures are confusing me especially with how you listed the wattage. What type of LED's are you using? Also what is the ratings on the LED drivers they should have a constant ma rating which will determine the true wattage that LED's will be consuming. the wattage rating on the Drivers is the max that they can handle and not necessarily the amount that will used. Actually I do not like to push a driver any higher than 90% of its max rating.
> 
> Different LED's will also use different amounts of power at various ma levels. This is why we need to know exactly what LED's your running. Again it is not advisable to run the LED at there maximum rating.


Tanks for sort of being on tha same page. Anyway i have LEDs that r 1w an 3w the little clusters some r 7w an others r 5w, what im thinkin is running all the LEDs i got in tha as 1w this way the 3w ones wount be maxed at all. I have 2 drivers that r 50w each an 3 that r 30w each thats what im working with. Thays why the tape in the middle sayes (if I ran all at 1w the total will be 52w) the other pieces of tape jus state what i have in total wattage on that section if i was gonna run them at the max. Any more help u can offer will be greatly apreciated.


----------



## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

The thing is will have to match up the LED's to your drivers. As I said before I realy need to LED specs however you gave me an idea as to what you have.

The Clusters you claim are rated at 7 watt and they appear to have 5 emitters in each cluster. This means a max of 1.4 Watts per emitter. Now most (not all) high powered LED's run between 2.8V and 3.4 Volts with the current regulated power supplies. As a rough estimate we can guess they are going to drop 3.1 Volts on average so for 1.4 Watts they would need a driver at the max of 450 ma. Standard driver sizes are 350 ma, 700ma, 1040ma and 1400ma so I will assume your drivers are 350 ma for these multi-emitter chips. With you using 4 multi emitter chips with 5 emitters each gives you a total of 20 emitters on that chain. The 350ma driver would run these at closer to 3 Volts each meaning your getting 1.1 Watts out of each emitter or a total of 22 Watts of power.

Now these multi chip emitters may be specially wired to run on a constant voltage driver with usually runs 12 volts. in that case your getting 2.4 Volts per emitter but the emitters are none standard and probably will draw closer to 600ma each.

Note the big difference here between the assumptions between the two possibilities of what you have. If you can give me a reference to exactly which LED's you purchases and drivers you purchased I can walk you through the wiring. Do you have link to where you bought your parts? 

Your 1 Watt LED's would be easier to guess. Neither Cree or Philips makes 1 Watt emitters sold on stars any more by major dealers. But looking at them they are probably Epistar LED's. These run at one watt with a 350 ma Driver, and the newer designed ones run at 3 watt with a 1040ma driver. Note that is pushing the LED and most people run them at 700 ma. 

If at all possible give me your parts numbers for the both the drivers and the LED's.


----------



## customtanks (Oct 31, 2014)

TropTrea said:


> The thing is will have to match up the LED's to your drivers. As I said before I realy need to LED specs however you gave me an idea as to what you have.
> 
> The Clusters you claim are rated at 7 watt and they appear to have 5 emitters in each cluster. This means a max of 1.4 Watts per emitter. Now most (not all) high powered LED's run between 2.8V and 3.4 Volts with the current regulated power supplies. As a rough estimate we can guess they are going to drop 3.1 Volts on average so for 1.4 Watts they would need a driver at the max of 450 ma. Standard driver sizes are 350 ma, 700ma, 1040ma and 1400ma so I will assume your drivers are 350 ma for these multi-emitter chips. With you using 4 multi emitter chips with 5 emitters each gives you a total of 20 emitters on that chain. The 350ma driver would run these at closer to 3 Volts each meaning your getting 1.1 Watts out of each emitter or a total of 22 Watts of power.
> 
> ...


The drivers i dont have part numbers for, i can send u a pic/pics of the drivers close up all the stuff i got is just cheap stuff from China the LEDs r epistars i think they dont list the brand. The reasearch i did do from what i can tell the LEDs should be epistars. The link i PMed ya is where i got my stuff from.


----------



## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

customtanks said:


> The drivers i dont have part numbers for, i can send u a pic/pics of the drivers close up all the stuff i got is just cheap stuff from China the LEDs r epistars i think they dont list the brand. The reasearch i did do from what i can tell the LEDs should be epistars. The link i PMed ya is where i got my stuff from.


I'll agree that the LED's are probably EPISTAR. But Epistar makes a wide range on LED's and it is nearly impossible to find out what you have from them without a spec sheet. But most Epistar 3 Watt LED's have a max of 700ma and there 1 Watt ones usually have a max of 300ma.

As far as the drivers go is all I need is the label information look for anything marker output.


----------

