DIY LEDs - The write-up

[Damarcman]

Doing some Pre tank investigation...
Looking at doing a 36x30x20 rimless peninsula tank with probably 18in water depth.
60 Leds: 36RB, 20CW, 4NW on 5 MeanWell ELN-60-48D dimmable drivers connected to my Apex. I would like the fixture to be roughly 2 feet off the water.

How does this look? Right side would be the back of the tank, the top/left/bottom would be viewable sides. With this setup, I could control outer viewable sides brightness and inner area independently. My thinking is that I could darken outer edges while leaving main rock areas in middle more bright or Vice Verse. If this design would work, what would you guys recommend for optics knowing 24+ off the water, and prefer minimal light spillage. And for the 4 Neutral White Led's would you put a optic that spreads them a little more... also this setup puts a little more "white" light in the middle, do corals grow better via white or blue?

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

That's a creative setup. To take a stab at some of your questions:

Even though you have fewer neutral whites, I would not use wider optics on them - IME, mixing different width optics on different colors can end up creating huge color separation problems (i.e. you'll see multiple different-colored shadows around objects) unless it is done very carefully. My suggestion, instead of doing that, would be to add more neutral whites in place of a few of the cool whites, such that you get even coverage by virtue of having them spread across the tank.

I do personally think it looks kinda good to have the middle of a tank a little whiter and the outsides a little more blue - it tends to create a better illusion of depth if the areas that are supposed to be "far away" are bluer, IME.

24" up, I would probably be looking at 40 degree optics, unless you can find something a little narrower - most of the major vendors targeting the reef hobby don't carry anything narrower than that but they are out there - look at generic vendors or those who target the flashlight hobby. I would probably aim for something around 25 - 30 degrees FWHM at the narrowest, and 40 at the widest.

Do corals grow better under white or blue - I don't think we can make a sweeping statement either way. It's gonna vary heavily from coral to coral. A tank laid out like this, where there are different zones with different intensities and colors, is gonna be very flexible as far as situating corals where they are the most happy.

 

[Damarcman]

Ty very much for that reply. I would probably do rapidled, and I think 40 is their option, what height do you think 40's would be good for?. Say 18-24in off water? Also did you think 60leds is enough for most any corals on this size tank?

 

[bmwaaron]

Does anyone have experience Drilling a Heat sink with a 10 inch Drill press?
I'm looking at purchasing one to drill my Heat sink. Since its aluminum I believe it should be very easy to drill if the drill can go slow enough.
Any advise or recommendations on 10 inch drill presses and Bits?

 

[Garage1217]

Does anyone have experience Drilling a Heat sink with a 10 inch Drill press?
I'm looking at purchasing one to drill my Heat sink. Since its aluminum I believe it should be very easy to drill if the drill can go slow enough.
Any advise or recommendations on 10 inch drill presses and Bits?

Yep, I does :beer: This was from a ryobi press and a single dewalt 3-32nd bit / 240 holes.

First, I recommend printing out a pattern of at least dots layed out to scale so you can mark your heatsink like so. Tape your pattern onto the heatsink and use a hammer and punch to mark the areas you wish to drill. I use microsoft visio to lay out my led patterns and if anyone else uses visio, I can give the patterns for the stars I used. Think they were 20mm? been ages so cannot remember.

Once you have punched every place you plan to drill, remove the paper. It will look like this.

The next step is more a verbal description. I recommend using a 3/32nd drill bit to drill out the holes. I recommend this as you can then use a metric M3 button head allen / machine screw and it will thread perfectly into the 3/32nd hole and will not pull out / will be very tight! Please drill a test hole in scrap and try threading in the m3 machine screw as I am going off memory.

Prior to drilling the holes, make sure you set the deck height of the drill press with the heatsink on the deck so that you do not drill all the way through the heatsink. You should only drill up to 90% of the way through the base of the heatsink.

A pic of a bunch of holes drilled...

I then recommend using red or green scotchbrite to put a brushed finish on the heatsink assembly. Press hard on the aluminum with the scotchbrite and use it like sandpaper going back and forth in one direction only, no swirly patterns. Once finished, it will look like this. In this pic, I test threaded in the stainless allens but it is not needed.

The last thing I recommend is to have your heatsinks anodized so they do not turn nasty / ugly over time. Anodizing is not very expensive. I spent $100 to get all 5 of my large heatsinks done. Then you end up with something like this... If you used a pattern, a punch and drilled right on your punch marks, it will come out CNC quality. And for goodness sakes, DO NOT FORGET to use washers under metal screws or you can dead short out every led.

3 of my 5 panels...

If you are doing point to point wiring, do not make an ugly spaghetti mess of horror. Take your time, pre-cut your leads and at least try to make it look clean for point to point.

 

[Garage1217]

Few more images of the setup I built with a cheap ryobi drill press lol

This was not done by the drill press, I took in the heatsinks and had a section cnc'ed out to accommodate the fan assemblies.

I then drew up fan mounts and had them laser cut out of blue acrylic. You can see one of the heatsinks after it was cnc'ed and then anodized.

Pic of me tinkering around. The piece of crap in the grass is what I originally paid a machine shop to make for me but it was so horrid I took it to be recycled. So I did all the work myself on my drill press on the porch lol

Parts of the led fixture drilled, cleaned up with red scotch brite and primed with metal etching primer.

Fast forward... the fixture partially assembled...

Power supplies wired...

And final product over my tank. Had acrylic covers laser cut to cover the power supply sections and keep fingers from accidentally hitting AC. I also ended up building a motorized lift system for the light which can raise it all the way to the roof but that is OT and can be found in my build thread.

Build thread...
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1878249


And as I usually get asked....
- Build was with XR-E leds / 80 degree optics
- 2 spectacular colors only, around a 4500K white and D3 royal blues. No multi colors, no reds, no greens... none of that.
- Yes I am 100% happy with the color, in fact it is spectacular to me. Almost identical to my ushio and aqualine AB 20K MH bulbs of old.

 

[bmwaaron]

WOW thanks for all the pictures it looks great and will help.
What kind of shop does the anodized work?

 

[Garage1217]

Most major cities have a shop or several that specialize in anodizing metals. The one I use here in Az is simply called "Anodizing of Mesa"

 

[mikezalewski]

man those pics are sweet! also nice collection of DVD's and Blueray's!

 

[Garage1217]

man those pics are sweet! also nice collection of DVD's and Blueray's!

Thanks, that was the collection of blu-ray in January. Has easily doubled or more. And I have a hallway full of DVD's. My wife and I are movie fanatics.

 

[sedorusc]

Anyone have any plans for supports/hangers or enclosures. I'm not the greatest diyer and would love to basically have what I should do spelled out for me.

 

[Garage1217]

You can get steel cable to hang a light with at home depot. Use a cable ferrule and crimper to make cable loops or whatever to attach to the light. It would look like the pic below.. Just choose the size ferrule per the cable you plan to use. These can also be found at home depot.

And what a loop could look like, make it whatever size you desire.

The hardest thing to find is a quality Y clamp. I looked and looked and found nothing of interest and kept thinking that I had seen the perfect Y clamp for steel cable before and it hit me one night at dinner! A Y clamp for a cable brake system on a bike. They are tough as nails, look great and perfectly suited to the application. I used these.... They are $9.99 a pair.

You can see them in use in this photo.. They are supporting with ease my very heavy fixture that is 6' x 14" x 2"

 

[Frode]

Garag1217, your work is so nice...I hardly dare to post any pic of my very simple DIY-build-into-ATI-SUNpower-T5-fixture now.

Just planned to do so. But I'll wait a few days now

 

[Garage1217]

Thanks Correction on the drill bit size for use with m3 machine screws or button head allens.... found this in my old thread.

A little tip for those who are scared to use screws to mount their leds, This is mainly for people using heatsinks but should work fine with U-channel. Just be careful on the torque if using U-channel since it is pretty thin. For example, my heatsinks are .300" thick on the base-plate.
- Drill each hole with a 7/64th drill bit
- An M3 .50 x 6MM button head machine screw will self tap itself into the 7/64th hole / aluminum perfectly and hold darn tight so no worries about it ripping out. Did 240 of them / used my drill clutched to 1 to put them in and did not have an issue with any of them.
- The washers I used to isolate the screw, as I get the question a lot are part number 16FW004032 and are only .031 thick.

 

[kcress]

Very clean build. Nice.

Normally fans sunk into hole don't work very well, but do I see those not having sides on them?? That would seem to be an improvement.

 

[onecoder]

If this has been answered already I am sorry I did search and could not find an answer. I am starting a 40 breeder picked the tank up for $40 at petco.

I am going to do DIY LED lighting. While looking at rapicLEd I found that they have DIY KITS. I was thinking of the dimmable 36 LED kit for $280. Does anyone have experience with this kit? Would I be better off price and quality wise to just build my own?

Thanks.

 

[Garage1217]

Very clean build. Nice.

Normally fans sunk into hole don't work very well, but do I see those not having sides on them?? That would seem to be an improvement.

They work outstandingly well if done properly and the right fan is used The fans are only 12mm thick / 120mm scythe 2000rpm / 45cfm fans. The heatsinks are CNC'ed the full depth of the fins at 26mm. The fans are slightly raised 2mm by the fan mounts so the plenum-chamber under the fans is 16mm tall and from the edge of the fan blades, there is around 18-19mm of clearance.

Even at 9V to the fans which is just barely audible with all the pumps off, you can feel a solid, constant stream of air which flows all the way to the end of the heatsinks, front to back which keeps each heatsink around 12F above ambient with fans running at 9v / leds at 100%. The temp is taken at the bottom of the heatsink between leds. With fans turned up to a full 12V, the temp is only 4 degrees above ambient between leds.

With no fans on, the heatsinks can reach around 50 degrees above ambient and usually holds at that temp so the fans are doing their jobs perfectly. :beer:

Fans I used are these...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185139

 

[mikezalewski]

Do you really need a fan on a smaller setup? I had a 24led setup with a large heat sync and really did not have any heat problems. I think the bigger you go then you will need fans but for smaller builds you do not need one!

 

[Garage1217]

Depends on how hard you are driving the leds, what type of leds they are, the heatsinks used / size. It just all depends. It takes quite a bit of time for mine to warm up but at their peak, the heatsinks are only around 130F and that is a 24qty per heatsink. I like to keep my leds as cool as possible as the junction temp between the led itself and the star is really what matters, so the cooler overall, the lower the junction temp and the better it is for the led.

 

[brassmonkyballs]

If this has been answered already I am sorry I did search and could not find an answer. I am starting a 40 breeder picked the tank up for $40 at petco.

I am going to do DIY LED lighting. While looking at rapicLEd I found that they have DIY KITS. I was thinking of the dimmable 36 LED kit for $280. Does anyone have experience with this kit? Would I be better off price and quality wise to just build my own?

Thanks.

Thats a good kit for that tank. Still need a heatsink of some sort.