DIY LEDs - The write-up

[der_wille_zur_macht]

6' x 4' footprint, 2' tall. My heatsinkusa plan was six of the 8.46" heatsinks, 36" long. That was $480.

Meanwhile, as an example, 1.75" x 1.75" x .125" L, 5' long, is around $12. 12 of those, is ~$150.

 

[bstohrer]

at 48x20 it will run me about 250 for heatsinks. Don't think I could get channel, or l brackets thick enough with all attachment hardware for under that. Just checking to see if any heatsinks places were cheaper. Thought it was fairly reasonable myself.

Heat sinks won't work for my application due to weight (3/4 of it needs to hang from the part of my canaopy that opens) and height (3.5" to top of water). Like some others, I've elected to use channels wtih XPGs and XRE spaced at 2.5".

Bob

 

[Santoki]

I've found that channels end up being more expensive for the same amount of emitters (if you wanted many LEDs), due to the fact that you can't fit as many on the channel without getting into active cooling. I think channels would work perfectly for people who do not necessarily want to blast their tanks with light and prefer a more "traditional even lighting" look.
If low emitter densities designs were built using heatsinks, it would be much more expensive.
In my tests, I've found a happy number to be 3 XR-Es per foot of solid 1 5/8 x 1 5/8 aluminum channel. Anyone have different findings?
-Robert

 

[widmer]

6' x 4' footprint, 2' tall. My heatsinkusa plan was six of the 8.46" heatsinks, 36" long. That was $480.

Meanwhile, as an example, 1.75" x 1.75" x .125" L, 5' long, is around $12. 12 of those, is ~$150.

I would like to second Santoki's idea about the channels. Also, why use so much heatsinkusa materials? Have you considered doing strips of it like me? As a quick example, you could buy a 23" section of the 10.05" profile for $86, and have him chop it into eighteen 1-inch slices. Then you could have three across by six long and that would be excellent coverage. Even doubling your order for three across by 12 long would come in under $200.

IMO the cost-per-heatsinking ability of the 10.05" form factor from heatsinkusa simply can't be beat...

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Then you could have three across by six long and that would be excellent coverage.

Not sure if I'm understanding your suggested orientation. You're suggesting eighteen 1" x 10" strips. Three across by six long would leave some HUGE gaps between sections, even if I doubled that. It would give me 360 square inches of "heatsink surface" to mount LEDs on, for about the same cost as my channel arrangement, which gives me 1,260 square inches of surface.

 

[widmer]

I guess I am motivated to advocate for the 10.05" mpja heatsinks because I know how well they dissipate heat. You can mount the LED stars elbow to elbow without active cooling on these things. I know the aluminum channels give you more tank-facing surface area, but how far apart do you have to mount the stars on them? Would you have to actively cool them as well?

If you did three across by 6 long your gap between strips the long way would be ~10" assuming the first and last were 5 feet apart and ~2" the short way. Is this too much of a gap?

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Is this too much of a gap?

Probably, yes.

Though to be fair, I don't want perfectly even lighting across the entire tank.

I really need to do some modeling to firm up exactly where I want LEDs, so I can decide what the best solution is. I keep flip-flopping on how I'm going to implement this.

 

[perikaruppan]

thanks widmer for the finding.

What i actually found was, instead of using a large heatsink for the setup, if you can get in a strip of heatsink for each row, as suggested by widmer, wont that be better. as well as it can reduce the costing drastically.

What actually determines the heat transfer?
1. is it is the surface area on which the LED is mounted?
2. The thickness of this surface?
3. The height of the fins on top?

If option 3 is not that much important, then why dont we use plain simple thick (say 3-4mm) aluminium plates? i have seen a DIY on sgreef.com, which has got this plate model. I think that person has also got a post on here.

 

[ReefEnabler]

and have him chop it into eighteen 1-inch slices. Then you could have three across by six long and that would be excellent coverage.

Yikes, heatsinkusa will cut them for you? I could have saved a bunch of time, cutting those into strips was a huge PITA.

FWIW my strips are 1.5" x 12" long, each strip has ~34watts. With no cooling, the heatsinks get hot to the touch; I can put my finger on and hold for maybe 3-5 seconds before it hurts. With a fan, the temp is barely above my body temperature. Like when my baby is running a lowgrade fever. That with just a single 80mm fan blowing on the side, not even into the fins. Soon I'll be mounting them all up properly and expect it to get even cooler (not that its necessary).

Last night I finished mounting and soldering my last 30 LEDs I did infact get beamshots of all the available carclo optics on the XP-G and MC-E, I just have to sort, resize, upload and then post them all, which I probably won't get to until later tonight.

 

[Santoki]

well... keep in mind, that heatsinkusa charges for every cut.
So you have to factor that in when figuring prices.
-R

 

[widmer]

well... keep in mind, that heatsinkusa charges for every cut.
So you have to factor that in when figuring prices.
-R

This was not my experience. When I called and spoke to the CEO (or janitor? lol it's a one-person operation), he told me that he's planning on redesigning his site, and it's just set up the way it is so that he can still generate profit on smaller orders (ie if you were to purchase just one inch of small heatsink, he needs to charge enough for it ti be worthwhile).

He told me that you simply need to order enough material so that you can plan for 1/4" of material loss per cut due to the blade so that he does not absorb that cost in multiple slices. IE if you want 4 one-inch slices, you can simply purchase the 5-inch peice and pay the cutting fee once.

And that is in fact basically what I ended up doing.

 

[Mcain Bwood]

is there a step by step link or website out there that gives you detailed instruction on how to build the most efficient led system for your specific tank?? Thanks

 

[TheFishMan65]

No one site that I found. A bunch of threads in various places, most of which are summed up here.

So we are coming up on 80 pages, did the double the split size or no more splits? Boy we sure get some off topic questions around here

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Not really, at this point. Just reading this thread and asking questions, or looking at LED builds on other forums. If you want us to give feedback, post up:

1) tank size (actual dimensions)
2) livestock goals (i.e. low light, high light SPS, etc.)
3) height the LEDs will be above the water

Also, keep an eye on the ReefKeeping Magazine blog, as there will be a series of articles on LEDs over the next few months.

 

[ti-christ]

Why nobody is using the XP-E model instead of the XR-E model LEDs. From my distributor, the XP-E seems cheaper than the XR-E model ?

I want to build a LED fixture for my 6'x2'x2' which has 2 braces. I currently run a 3x 250W HQI + 8x 3' T5HO. I want to keep SP and LPS but mostly SPS.

I guess that I will have 3 groups of LED (it worth nothing to have LED on top of the brace : ) ) but how many and what is the spacing to you recommand between LEDs. Also, do you recommand lens on the LEDs? If yes, which angle is the best?

The thread is very formative. Thank you guys!!!!

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Some people are. If anything, their lack of popularity is just due to convention and habit.

They're more or less interchangeable in terms of efficacy. The only real differences are that the XP-E has a wider field of view (i.e. the built-in optic is wider) and it's a much smaller package, so optics are not generally interchangeable between the two.

On a shallow tank, or a tank where you didn't mind a wide spread, they're pretty much the same. On a deep tank or a high-mounted fixture, you're gonna want optics either way, so again - pretty much the same.

 

[Skeptic_07]

Some people are using XP-E

 

[Skeptic_07]

I just found this pretty neat tool

http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz

 

[ReefEnabler]

xp-e also has a bit more thermal resistance than XR-E..... 9 c/w for XP-E vs 8 for XR-E. I read somewhere they recommend max current of 700ma for the XP-E due to this although the datasheet says 1000ma still.

 

[ReefEnabler]

I got the beamshot comparisons up for MC-E and XP-G using all available Carclo optics except for the ellipticals.

Rather than having to make several posts to contain all the images, I instead made a JavaScript slideshow located here that makes the differences very clear:

http://www.worstkind.com/aquarium/leds/optics/mce_xpg.html

If your browser doesn't support Javascript or if you want to do your own A-B comparison between different optics, just browse the images manually, they are well named:

http://www.worstkind.com/aquarium/leds/optics/

One thing I notice is there isn't much difference between the Carclo XRE and XPG/MCE optics on these LEDs.

On the MC-E, comparing 10209 (frosted wide for xpg/mce) to 10211 (frosted wide for the xre), you can tell a *slight* difference because the + mark moves a bit... on the XP-G I can't really tell a difference.