T
treez
Guest
Hello,
We took apart a mains connected streetlight “head” from China.
The head had a hole which was for sliding onto the vertical pole (lamp post).
This hole was quite a tight fit to the pole, but obviously not an absolutely perfect seal…so in other words, air and moisture and small dust particles would be able to get inside the head through this tiny gap between pole and “head-hole”.
Now, inside the streetlight head was the LED driver inside a plastic enclosure. We noticed that the plastic enclosure was not totally enclosed, but had air gaps around the connectors at each end of the plastic box….so in other words, the LED driver PCB and electronic components were in fact “open to the air”.
Given this “Open-air” nature, do you think that the LED driver PCB would need to be conformal coated?
I mean, for example, we noticed that there was a TO220 switching FET in the LED driver enclosure which had straight legs into its PCB footprint (and so not much clearance between drain and source pins)
Or do you think that it would even need potting to prevent dust and moisture from ingressing into and around the PCB and electronic components? (obviously some way would need to be found to prevent the potting compound from escaping while it cures during the potting procedure)
We took apart a mains connected streetlight “head” from China.
The head had a hole which was for sliding onto the vertical pole (lamp post).
This hole was quite a tight fit to the pole, but obviously not an absolutely perfect seal…so in other words, air and moisture and small dust particles would be able to get inside the head through this tiny gap between pole and “head-hole”.
Now, inside the streetlight head was the LED driver inside a plastic enclosure. We noticed that the plastic enclosure was not totally enclosed, but had air gaps around the connectors at each end of the plastic box….so in other words, the LED driver PCB and electronic components were in fact “open to the air”.
Given this “Open-air” nature, do you think that the LED driver PCB would need to be conformal coated?
I mean, for example, we noticed that there was a TO220 switching FET in the LED driver enclosure which had straight legs into its PCB footprint (and so not much clearance between drain and source pins)
Or do you think that it would even need potting to prevent dust and moisture from ingressing into and around the PCB and electronic components? (obviously some way would need to be found to prevent the potting compound from escaping while it cures during the potting procedure)