LED Project

[labnjab]

With a decent tax return coming we've decided to upgrade the led lighting on our softie tank. We just ordered everything we needed and a friend is building a canopy for us. Led stuff is coming from rapidled.com and the heatsink is from heatsinkusa.com

Heres what we ordered

6 Cool White Cree Q5 XR-E LEDs
6 Royal Blue Cree Q5 XR-E LEDs
12 -80 degree optics
1 Mean Well ELN-60-48D dimmable driver
5.375x 16 Inch heatsink
a 3 inch mechatronics 120volt fan
thermal paste

Everything should be here by mid week and we will hopefully have the light built by the weekend. It seems fairly simple to set-up with basic soldering skills and is suppose to be similar to a 150 watt metal halide, although I have to see it to believe it. All that you need to do to set them up is drill and tap the heatsink to mount the bulbs, then wire them to the driver. The dimmer will come later. I just ordered the dimmable driver so I could have the option to put them on a dimmer later on down the road.

This is all we have for now and I will post pictures once we get started with the build

[labnjab]

All the bulbs and ballast came in yesterday afternoon so all thats left is the heatsink, which should be here today. Then I just need to buy some hardware fasten all and a potentiometer from radioshack for the dimming circuit. A good friend is building us a canopy for us for material cost and a few frags for labor, so we should have everything up and running by this weekend. My night will consist of drilling, taping, and soldering ;D



Total cost will be roughly $240 including the canopy

[Cliff]

This is going to be a pretty good project

I'm going to follow along and see how you put it all togther.

I have been thingking about trying something like this for a while now

[labnjab]

If it works out like I want it to, I plan on changing over the halide on our frag tank to a 48+ bulb led set-up by summer.

[labnjab]

I screwed up, lol. I had it all wired up friday night, fired it up, it ran for 10 seconds and turned off. Turns out with the dimmable ballast I had to turn down the output switch inside the ballast. Its set for 1.3 amps and the LEDS are only good until 1 amp, so I fried all 12 leds :'( It doesn't come with directions so I found this information out too late. They were wicked bright for those few seconds, I saw spots for an hour, lol

Since we have $60 invested in the heatsink, I'm not giving up, I just ordered the same kit with a non dimmable ballast so stay tuned next week when I get it finished.

I managed to get all 24 holes drilled and tapped and only broke 1 tap. I used non stick spray for lube since it was all I had around the house, lol, and it worked great, just gotta clean the heatsink down with rubbing alcohol before I use the arctic silver. I'll have a few pictures in the morning.

[hockeyhead019]

Sorry to hear that man, cooking electronics is always the worst. Definitely get some pics up and glad to hear your gonna stick with it! sounds like a cool project

[labnjab]

Thank you. We are just waiting on the blues now. Whites are working great and extremely bright. Everything should be done on Monday or Tuesday. The canopy our friend built is awesome, now I just teed to find a way to mount the lights in it

[labnjab]

Finally got some pictures. The blue leds will be here today.

Heres where we mixed the thermal paste. Nothing fancy, just a paper plate, lol


Here are the whites, pasted down and soldered. The blues will fill in the gaps





The awesome canopy our friend made us

[labnjab]

And the ballast mounted to the backside of the canopy

[labnjab]

We finally got it working ;D All lights are only running on 1 ballast since I still haven't figured our the dimmable ballast, but at least they are working. They are super bright. The color is somewhere between 14000K and 20000K and its even with no dark spots or mis colored spots and without the use of optics. Even has a shimmer comparable to our metal halides on our 75 gallon. Here are some pictures of it up and running and I'll post some of the build pics later
1st here it is with the old lights


FTS with new lights and canopy (thanks again Jay) and the glass really needs to be cleaned


The lights them self




The old light was using 18 3 watt gu-10 bulbs and new new light uses only 12 3 watt Cree Q5 XR-E bulbs. I'll be throwing a few of our more colorful sps frags from our frag tank in here to see how they do. If they grow well, or at least look good then were going to start saving for a set-up like this for our frag tank.