Electronic – Determine supply voltage for led from current limiting resistor

currentledohms-lawresistors

Everyone knows how to calculate the resistance of a current limiting resistor for a LED but is it possible to go the other way? (aka determine the supply voltage from the resistor's value)

I ask this because I am working on re-purposing ink jet printer parts for low cost 3D printers to be built in developing countries. Ink jet printers used to use stepper motors but recently have started using DC motors with optical quadrature encoders. In order to use the e-waste one must find the voltage at which the quadrature encoders are supposed to operate at. While the forward voltage of the LED isn't known, is it possible to determine a ballpark idea of what voltage should be used to power the LED in the quadrature encoder?

Best Answer

Sorry, but no. Attempting to drive an LED with a constant voltage is a great way to kill an LED. The coefficient of forward voltage with temperature is negative, which means that, driven by a constant voltage, if the LED starts to get warm it will start to draw more current, which will increase the power dissipated by the LED, which will cause the forward voltage to drop even more, etc to disaster.

You are better off assuming an LED forward voltage of about 2 volts, then provide a convenient voltage/resistor combination to provide ~ 1 mA, then measure Vf. Then reduce the resistance so as to produce a series of currents in the 1-10 mA range, and at each current setting check the encoder for proper operation.