SDG #262 DIY High quality 20 W/m 90CRI LED strip with Cree LEDs

Off-the-shelf LED strip is cheap, but the colour rendering, binning consistency and thermal design are usually where corners get cut. This build tackles that head on by designing a custom strip around Cree JB2835A mid-power emitters at roughly 20 W per metre, fabricated on aluminium-backed MCPCB rather than the flexible polyimide tape most strips use. The choice matters: an aluminium substrate gives the LEDs a real path to dump heat into whatever the strip is mounted on, which is what keeps junction temperature down and lumen depreciation slow over years of use.

The 90CRI target is the other headline. Higher CRI phosphors trade efficacy for spectral quality, so the design has to budget for a bit more heat per lumen. The video works through per-LED power dissipation and current selection, then verifies the assumptions with actual thermal measurements on a finished board instead of trusting the datasheet curves alone.

Assembly is a useful watch in its own right. Aluminium PCBs are a thermal sink for your iron as much as for the LEDs, and the segment on using a high-power soldering cartridge for MCPCB rework explains why an ordinary station struggles. There is also practical coverage of 63/37 leaded solder paste stencilling for a long, repetitive footprint layout, and thoughts on a homemade SMD vacuum pickup tool for placing dozens of identical parts.

Diffusion and driver selection round things out. Bare mid-power emitters produce visible hot spots, so a diffuser channel is fitted and evaluated, and the closing discussion covers what to look for in a constant-voltage or constant-current supply for a strip of this length. Anyone building high-quality task, shelf or workshop lighting will find the tradeoffs here more informative than a spec sheet.