youre both right
capped leads are fine if you dont need to dim
101kohms, 110 kohm, infinite ohms, all the same. were just trying to get it above 100
airwalker, what canna is trying to say is pots have a tolerance.
a 100k 10% can be anywhere in the 90-110K range. if you get one thats 100-110K, adding resistance will do nothing. if you get one that is in the 90-100K range, adding 10K resistance (or opening circuit to infinite resistance) will give you a little bump in output to the max the driver is capable of
so for example the formula for dimming drivers is 100k divided by number of drivers
so 100k for 1 driver
50 k for two drivers dimming together
33.3k for 3
well i dont stock 33.3k pots and if someone wants to dim 3 drivers i jsut tell em to use a 50. why? because it can operate in the required range of 0-33K. doesnt matter if it goes over 33K.
the only difference is 33K-50K on the knob will look the same (full power), but you only get 2/3 of the travel of the pot for adjustment
like lets pretend the pot is like a clock, 7 oclock is zero ohms, 5 oclock is max resistance
on a 33K pot,
7:00 = 0 ohms (10% output)
12:00 = 16.5 ohms (~50% output)
5:00 = 33 ohms (100% ohms *if youre lucky and your pot is actually 33.3 or slightly over *)
on a 50K pot,
7:00 = 0 ohms (10% output)
10:00ish = 16.5k ohms (~50% output)
12:00 = 25k ohms (~75% output)
2:00ish to 5:00 = 33-50k ohms (full output)
so you have a little area on the pot which does nothing, but you are guaranteed to hit your 33.3k resistance to get full output
we just use 20,50,100k ohm because they are cheap and common. as canna mentioned 110-120k pots would be ideal if they were more common
5:00 = 33 ohms (100% ohms *if youre lucky and your pot is actually 33.3 or slightly over *)
