Have you ever been in a situation where you have an LED without the accompanying resistor? I know I have. It’s not always obvious that we need to use a resistor with LEDs, but it is necessary for preventing damage to our circuit boards and devices. In this blog post, we will discuss what happens when you don’t use a resistor with an LED so that you can avoid damaging your device!
- Temperature Increases On The LED Light
- LED Bulbs May Burn Without Resistor
- Other Components May Melt
- Battery May Drain Easily
To learn more about this topic, keep reading this article.
1. Temperature Increases On The LED Light
The main purpose of fixing resistors in an LED circuit is to control the amount of voltage that goes into your light, so if you don’t fix a resistor then it will be difficult for the LEDs as they could receive too much current and power.
For instance, let’s say we fixed our 2 volts through a 1-ohm resistor; this would maintain about 12v across 6 LEDs at most.
But without one installed may result in higher than necessary voltages or currents going through these lights which can cause them to overheat and eventually burn out.
2. LED Bulbs May Burn Without Resistor
An LED light is typically made of a material called phosphor, which makes the photons it emits visibly to humans. The electricity that goes through an LED lights up this phosphorous and causes them to release electromagnetic radiation in various wavelengths for its color.
A resistor will regulate how much electric current can flow from your battery into the led so as not to cause too high or too low currents respectively.
But there’s always some risk involved when using LEDs at night due to their sensitivity towards higher temperatures since they emit heat along with light – the hotter they are, the faster their lifespan decreases because we know nothing lasts forever!
An electrically powered device known as a Light Emitting Diode (LED) has been used by many people today thanks to being cheaper.
In order to make the battery safe, you need to have a resistor that limits how much current can flow through it. This is why for small batteries like AA or AAA size cells, we use resistors in series with LEDs connected across them so they don’t burn too bright and break down from overuse!
The LEDs will burn out very quickly if you don’t include a resistor. The direct current (DC) of the battery is just too strong and it overpowers the circuit, causing excessive heat that leads to premature breakdowns in your light bulbs.
3. Other Components May Melt
LED lights are usually intended to run off of a voltage around 3.3, but when we don’t use resistors and the current flows directly from the battery then about 9 volts will come out for which is connected straight to your LED light.
For this reason, it’ll be bright just before burning out so if you had voltages that were really high or too high it would cause sparks and because of those intense amounts, they’d end up melting some components inside your LED light.
If you had 9 volts battery connected straight to an LED but made sure the negative lead was on the opposite side of the positive terminal, no current would flow and your light won’t glow.
The same rule applies if we reversed this connection with a 12-volt power supply since the voltage is equal in both cases so I’ll just keep it at one example.
4. Battery May Drain Easily
As we know that the resistor is used to control the current which flows from the battery, so if there was no resistance then electricity would flow directly and this will cause our batteries to drain quickly.
However, LEDs are a type of energy saver for example let’s say you have an LED light with 12 volts connected straight into your battery.
But because there is no resistive property in-between it means all power goes through and drains your batter almost instantly.
The resistor is a vital component that converts electrical current into heat. We use resistors to control the flow of electricity and avoid over-heating our LED, with disastrous consequences!
Pros Of Using Resistor With An LED
The danger of using an LED without a resistor is that it could easily burn out, causing the bulb to melt and components to both breakdown or get destroyed.
Resistors help control electricity in order to prevent these types of damage from happening which will cause your battery and temperature levels also increase dramatically due to overuse.
The LED is designed to be used with a voltage source that limits the current through it. It also prevents burning of the device, so if you have an equal voltage on both sides then there’s no need for the resistor and not using one will cause issues like limiting efficiency, lifespan, or performance as well as regulating temperature.
Below are some more advantages of using a resistor with your LEDs
1. Limits The Current
The introduction of a resistor has the ability to change current flow by limiting voltage. For example, if you reduce the battery’s power output from 9 volts down to 7 V with an additional 3 Ω resistance, there will be less electricity flowing through, and more likely than not this is what we want in order for energy conservation purposes while also saving money on our electric bill.
LEDs come in a variety of colors and sizes, but don’t think that all LEDs are created equal. Some LED lights can be found with different voltage requirements for the same color or brightness.
This is because they use less power than others to produce light, so when you buy an LED it should always have its rating on the package such as 3V at 20mA which means this is rated to operate from 3 volts and draw up to 20 milliamps (2/10ths-a-watt).
2. Dividing Voltage
Resistors come in handy when you need to divide or reduce the voltage of a circuit.
For example, if your battery outputs 4 volts but only 2 are needed for one part of your circuit, then two resistors with equal values can be used to split that power and give each area what it needs!
3. Lifespan
LED lights are famous for being highly efficient, but also tend to wear out quickly.
The lifespan of an LED light is dependent on the amount and type of use it receives: in general, a more heavily used bulb will burn faster than one with less usage.
4. Efficient and Performance
Lighting is the key factor to everything, and for lighting, it’s more important because if you’re not efficient with your light then accidents can happen.
Resistorless LED lights are very energy-efficient but they aren’t as bright or performant so people use resistors. The resistor makes them burn well enough while still being high performance
