I've read through nearly all of the DIY LED threads on several forums as well as followed all the instructions from RapidLED on wiring a series of CREE XP-G's to a Meanwell ELN-60-48D driver but I just can't seem to get my light to work.
First off, I wired in a potentiometer to a 10V power source and to the Meanwell driver. Using a multimeter, I'm getting 350 mA with the potentiometer on full and the Meanwell driver internal pot set to the minimum with the multimeter connected to the V+ and V- leads from the meanwell. If I turn up the internal pot on the driver, I can bring my current from 350 mA up to 1.3 A so I know I'm getting power to the LED series as the driver and potentiometer are working correctly.
Now after connecting the V+ and V- leads from the Meanwell driver to my series of LED's, none of the LEDs will fire. I assumed I had a bogus LED so I tested them all indiviudlaly with a battery and sure enough, the 1st LED in the series was fried. After removing the LED from the series, I reconnected the V+ and V- leads from the Meanwell driver and the LED series still won't ignite. When I connected my multimeter in series with the LEDs after the final LED, I'm getting no current reading so I'm not getting any power going through my circuit.
I then went and tested all of the LEDs indiviudally again with a battery and they will only fire up when the battery is connected to the + and - posts on an individual LED. If I try to connect 2 or more LEDs together in a series none of them will fire. However, if I connect the battery to the + terminal of the 1st LED and to the + terminal of the 2nd LED in the series, the 1st LED will fire showing that the wiring/soldering between the two LEDs is sound. When I then connect the battery to the + terminal of the 1st LED and the - terminal of the 2nd LED, neither of the LEDs fire up when both of them should.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I wasted about 4 hours last night troubleshooting this thing and ended up tearing out all of my wiring and redoing it to no avail.
Here is a pic of how I have the LEDs mounted to the heatsink. Ignore the 1st LED with the black marker as that was the dud.
Here I pencilled in how I had the LEDs wired together before removing the wiring last night.
Here is a close up of how i have the LEDs wired. I only resoldered the first 2 LEDs together again for testing purposes and was unable to get both to fire at the same time off of a battery.
