DIY LED project. 24 x 3w and 40 x 3w

[Tom Toro]

The Father/Son LED DIY weekend starts tomorrow. I have to get myself an array of tools (read Evil's Thread) from Home Depot.

1st up is for my son's 28g biocube. 24x3w LED on a 7x11" heatsink.

2nd up is for me and it's a 40x3w LED (30x453nm + 10x420nm) on a 60" tubular heat sink.

2 fans for the 24 and 1 percussion fan for the 40.

I bought most of the parts from Aquastyle. I've heard their drivers are lousy but for the money, I can swap out the drivers if I need to and still be ahead.

The only problem is the instructions. Vague at best. Does anybody have a link to generic directions/advice/cautions that I can use for my project?

I have some simple questions like:

-how far apart do the LED's need to be spaced? Can they be 1" apart or 2" apart, what's too close,what am I trying to achieve/avoid, etc.

-How can I wire the fans so they go on with the fixture instead of using their own plugs

-Proper soldering technique for the LED's. I could see too much heat damaging the led's

-Any tricks of the trade that would make the installation easier

-Cautions (DON'T DO THIS!)

Thanks for any help,
Tom

[Tom Toro]

All done. Took about 5 hours of soldering, cutting and thinking. Son did most of the thinking. Thanks to Ninjaskillz for the help, especially the tinning process. Made the soldering easy. Followed some youtube how to videos too. The basement is a disaster area, but both are done and ready for installation. I decided to add an additional foot of heat sink to house all the LED's (took your advice to heart, Chameleon). The percussion fan works great and puts out tons more than any small muffin fan I've seen. Son's fixture fit perfectly in his biocube hood. He put in 4 muffin fans for his 78watt fixture and opened up some more vent holes for ventilation. Very clean job and can't wait to see it on his setup. More light than he needs, but he has two dimmers. He also put two 3w UV led's on another dimmer and transformer for his moonlights. We used his over one section of my 240 and it lit up at least a 4th of it (2') all the way to the bottom with no problem. My 120 watt 6' led worked well on my 135 and the violets really hd the corals. Tomorrow I have to come up with a mounting system and some sort of lense to protect the fixture. Here are a couple of pics after we were done.

Both are dimmed down to almost zero because it washed out the camera when on full and directly at the optics
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o242/TomToro/LEDDIY017.jpg
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o242/TomToro/LEDDIY018.jpg

Both kits including shipping from Hong Kong cost around $300. Aquastyle included extra led's, but not extra wire or wire connectors. The heat sink from Steve's was cheap but the shipping was high.

[Tom Toro]

Lousy pic of the LED supplimental lighting with the Iwasaki MH on .

http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o242/TomToro/NewpicsofLEDspstank005.jpg

[Tom@HaslettMI]

Nice work. Looks great! How about a before shot (or one without the LEDs on)?

Tom

[binford4000]

looks great Tom

[Tom Toro]

Nice work. Looks great! How about a before shot (or one without the LEDs on)?

Tom

Thanks Tom. I'll get one this evening and try to put the camera in the same spot.


looks great Tom

Thanks Chuck! Sorry I missed you at the swap. I was lookin' around for ya. Wanted to introduce you to my son. I told him a lot about your setups.

[binford4000]

Sorry I missed you guy's.I have been sick as a dog so I slipped in and got what I pre ordered and went home to my nyquil and bedI voluntered to hold a meeting at our house in Febuary,swing in.I haven't heard back from them tho so no date yet.It sounds like an old school reef geek meet tho !! I miss those

[Tom Toro]

How was the service and length of time to actually get the leds after ordering from aquastyle.... i am considering ordering some for my 180g through them and was wondering about that and quality.

Service was awesome. Quick to reply via email, but not if you send on their site. You have to copy the email address and use your own and they'll answer the next day. The site seems to lose the message.

I think it was around 2 weeks for them to show up. Maybe into the third week. They send extra led's in case you fry a couple.

Shipping costs were ridiculous, but it is coming from Hong Kong Fed x. Mine was $60.

Heat sink for son's kit was awesome. Good quality and came with the kit.

I like the Bridgelux, but don't have anything but the sunbrites to compare them to. Blows those away at less than half the price if you diy. Sunbrites were $300 for 6' tube @42w and these were around $150 including heat sink (from Steves) for a 6' tube, percussion fan and 120watts. Plus dimmable. I had to buy the heat sink from Steve's cause they didn't offer a long HS. I now see that home depot has a lot of long aluminum tubing that would've worked about the same.

We had to buy some extra wire at Radio Shack cause we wanted to move the drivers around. Also had to buy some project boxes and extra solder.

[Tom Toro]

Tom H.,
Here's the No LED and the ON LED
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o242/TomToro/ONOFFpicsofLEDs005.jpg
The Iwasakis are great for par, but really washed everything out.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o242/TomToro/ONOFFpicsofLEDs006.jpg
Here it is with all 120w on. I wish I'd taken before and after with the Sunbrites to show the difference.

[Tom Toro]

No problem, Chris.

The 36 count led kit is actually the one I bought. It came with everything included except the heat sink and fan (extra on their site). It doesn't show the two power cords, but mine came with two.

-You'll need more 20 gauge wire unless you plan on mounting the drivers very close to the last LED soldered.

-At $.50 a piece, you might want to buy a couple of different angle optics. I wish I had.

-Get some extra wire connectors. They only give just enough.

-I bought a Weller 40 watt soldering iron with three hot heads. Ended up using the middle size one. Small one heated too slowly.

-Their fans are terrible. No power at all so if they include it, use the transformer and buy a good muffin fan. You'll know what I mean as soon as you turn it on. The heat sink wasn't drilled for the fan.

-Your two drivers will drive 40 LED's @ 3w each so maybe order 4 more of different colors to use it all or more of the white for par. The whites and blues are around $3 each.

-Project box to mount the two potentiometers.

-Some good quality thermal epoxy. Their's is supposed to set up in 10 minutes and it took over 24 hrs for it to stop moving. Maybe we were doing something wrong. They are holding now, but when you have the LED's soldered together, they move around a lot when trying to place 'em.

-We soldered separately from the heat sink and glued as a string. Not sure if this was better or worse, but we figured the heat sink would draw the heat out and make it harder to get the plate on the LED hot enough.

I'm thinking about ordering some more from them to light up my 240. If you end up building them, let me know how you like them and if it's enough par. My son's is definitely strong enough on his 24g biocube and he has it turned down. I gave him some sps as a test so we'll see.

[Tom Toro]

No problem, Chris.

The 36 count led kit is actually the one I bought. It came with everything included except the heat sink and fan (extra on their site). It doesn't show the two power cords, but mine came with two.

-You'll need more 20 gauge wire unless you plan on mounting the drivers very close to the last LED soldered.

-At $.50 a piece, you might want to buy a couple of different angle optics. I wish I had.

-Get some extra wire connectors. They only give just enough.

-I bought a Weller 40 watt soldering iron with three hot heads. Ended up using the middle size one. Small one heated too slowly.

-Their fans are terrible. No power at all so if they include it, use the transformer and buy a good muffin fan. You'll know what I mean as soon as you turn it on. The heat sink wasn't drilled for the fan.

-Your two drivers will drive 40 LED's @ 3w each so maybe order 4 more of different colors to use it all or more of the white for par. The whites and blues are around $3 each.

-Project box to mount the two potentiometers.

-Some good quality thermal epoxy. Their's is supposed to set up in 10 minutes and it took over 24 hrs for it to stop moving. Maybe we were doing something wrong. They are holding now, but when you have the LED's soldered together, they move around a lot when trying to place 'em.

-We soldered separately from the heat sink and glued as a string. Not sure if this was better or worse, but we figured the heat sink would draw the heat out and make it harder to get the plate on the LED hot enough.

I'm thinking about ordering some more from them to light up my 240. If you end up building them, let me know how you like them and if it's enough par. My son's is definitely strong enough on his 24g biocube and he has it turned down. I gave him some sps as a test so we'll see.
Quick update: The 24 gallon biocube is growing sps with this setup. He has the whites on about 70% and the blues on about 90%. Easy to keep sps, but they're happy. Purple haze,pocillipora,blue stag,pink birdsnest,pink lemonade. Other corals doing well in there are zoas and a neon green candy cane. He doesn't have a skimmer, only one small fish and does weekly 5g water changes.

In my 135g, the corals have really colored up since the LED upgrade, although the success might be from actually keeping my numbers right with the doser from Chuck (Binford).

I'll have pics soon. The biocube is coming to my house in May for the summer.

[projectx]

Cool build, I am looking at doing one here shortly. How about growth and color in your tank?
Anything lost color ? What is Steves where you got the long heat sink,
Sorry for all of the questions, was running some chinese fixtures and just wasnt happy with the colors etc

[Tom Toro]

Cool build, I am looking at doing one here shortly. How about growth and color in your tank?
Anything lost color ? What is Steves where you got the long heat sink,
Sorry for all of the questions, was running some chinese fixtures and just wasnt happy with the colors etc

Thanks.

My long tube setup:
Growth was definitely better with the new led's.Poly extension was way better.

Color was great. Much more intense with 120w vs 42w. Tons more shimmer too. You can change that around if play with the optic options. I like the shimmer.

Individual corals each had their own changes. Pink birdsnest got pinker. Green stag turned blue almost all the way down to the base (used to have just blue tips). Both brain corals started growing very fast(for brain corals). They hadn't changed in years. Purple Haze turned from brown to deep purple.

I didn't lose anything.

Now as a side note, about the same time as this I started auto dosing my alk/ca and was getting some consistent numbers for once so I can't say the lights were the sole cause. But I know they helped.

My son's biocube:
Success all around and like I say, it'll be at my house soon and if the corals all survive the move, I'll take some pics.

Here's Steve's site.
Tubular Heatsinks (http://www.stevesleds.com/Tubular_Heatsinks.html)

[projectx]

oh cool, glad to hear it.
I ordered the Make professional heatsinks from LEDgroupbuy.com, they are a preorder only right now, but should be pretty slick when they come in. I am piecing this together buying a little here n a little there to offset the cost.

Glad to hear your having success with the builds