Diy Led build woo

[DoctaQ]

welps, it took a month to get everything all set up even after i had all the parts in. the hardest part was finding a drill press, next time ill probably just go with thermal adhesive of some kind if there is a next time haha

the leds are driven by well, drivers, six to a driver. one with all whites one with all blues and one with half and half, each driven by 24vDc each driver puts out one amp so if my preschool knowledge of eletricity is correct, it runs about 75 watts after the fans and efficiency loss



attached to the heatsink, before wiring, not very impressive but it took me a long time to get here. tapping took a long time, rows are for conformists, id rather make the pattern like a bat or whatever else you can see. its like looking at clouds or something


full power and you can take a peek at my living room




on my tank at full power

 

[DoctaQ]

blues only


next to my dwarf puffer tank , lit by 26 watts 6500k of spiral cfl

FTS current

sweet corals i picked up from brian and mike thanks guys


thanks to Kevin and Hon and evil from nano reef for helping me with this foolish project and thanks to everyone else for looking!
i would be glad to help anyone out

 

[coralcor]

wow! i rely want to do this.... retro fit it in to the hood of my red sea max

 

[paulthomas]

Nice job. If you don't mind me asking, what was the ~ cost for this project?

 

[DoctaQ]

Nice job. If you don't mind me asking, what was the ~ cost for this project?

hmm

heatsink about 40
3 drivers 20 each so 60
leds about 6 or 7 bucks each times 18... 108
power supply about 20
misc other supplies like wires and screws (generous allowance ) 20
​

250 is a pretty safe estimation
drivers can be made by someone with decent electrical knowledge saving 60 bucks would be huge.
my heatsink is pretty over kill, i probably could have gotten away with half the size
if you make your own drivers you could afford to just use a computer power supply or something so, due to my lack of electrical knowledge i had to spend 80 on the electrical side, if you built your own drivers and had a computer power supply around the house you could probably easily scrape 50 bucks off the cost.

 

[pvh]

Nice job.

 

[DoctaQ]

thanks guys

 

[coralcor]

wow expensive LED's

 

[snowmaker]

Very nice!

rows are for conformists

Funny

There are a few successful diy LED builds on SWAM as well.

 

[CaptainAndy]

Very, very nice.

 

[Ronnie]

Nice job with your project.

 

[mickeyfinn]

I like that, nice job! How much heat does it put off? What do the "drivers" look like? How far apart do the LED's need to be?

 

[DoctaQ]

my heatsink is like two feet and i have a little computer fan running on top of it so its pretty cool, i dont have one of those temp lasers that mechanics use but its not signifigantly warm
my tank is at about 80 but the space between the tank and the lights is the same temp as my room, i dont know why my tank is so warm, my other tanks are all cooler.
supposedly leds should not be more than 3 inches apart or you will get spotlighting and the blues and whites will not blend well

 

[NeverlosT]

wow and that many LED's is enough for those SPS corals?

Good job on the build, I dig it... when I build my in-wall system, I want to do something like this for the lights.

 

[DoctaQ]

without one of those fancy par meters i cant tell you for sure but about two weeks and everything is looking fine.