DIY LEDs - The write-up

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It is interesting but will probably be a while before we see those in use by hobbyists.


I finally last night finished wiring up one of my LED arrays with ~28v on a buckpuck (5 royalblue Luxeon3s, 1 green endor triemitter).

Looked pretty darn bright and the color was what I was hoping for. (a nice 15k with tons of actinic and some green). Now I have to finish putting my buckpucks and associated wiring into the hobby box, and start wiring the other 3 arrays.

I'll get some pics soon when I have time.


quick question though: I'm having a hard time getting excess solder off of my soldering iron tip after I tin it for cleaning. I wype it on the moist sponge thats part of my helping-hands, but the solder likes to cling to whatever part of the tip touched the sponge last..... I've been having to hold the sponge in my hand and fold it over the tip to get the solder off.

I know that's not the safest way, so what am I doing wrong that's making it so hard to clean off excess solder? Using a cheap 30w iron and rosin-core solder from radio shack...


Soldering the regular luxeonstars is pretty easy. The Endor rebel tri-emitters are a bit more difficult because the contacts are about 1/2 sized. I think smaller wire like 20 or 22gauge would be alot easier there.
 
Congratulations, this thread has been nominated as "Aprils Thread of the Month".

Thanks to all that voted.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14738232#post14738232 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ReefEnabler
quick question though: I'm having a hard time getting excess solder off of my soldering iron tip after I tin it for cleaning. I wype it on the moist sponge thats part of my helping-hands, but the solder likes to cling to whatever part of the tip touched the sponge last..... I've been having to hold the sponge in my hand and fold it over the tip to get the solder off.

I know that's not the safest way, so what am I doing wrong that's making it so hard to clean off excess solder? Using a cheap 30w iron and rosin-core solder from radio shack....
Click to expand...

the soldering iron i have has the sponge but they had put slits in the sponge, so that when you pulled the tip thru the slits, it would take the solder of all sides of the iron's tip.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14738232#post14738232 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ReefEnabler
quick question though: I'm having a hard time getting excess solder off of my soldering iron tip after I tin it for cleaning.
Click to expand...

The sponge cannot be "wet" it should only be damp.
You need to move very quickly across the sponge using a twirl motion, about 1/3 of a turn. If the sponge is too wet or you move too slowly the tip freezes nearly instantly and the solder congeals onto it. By the time you get it to your face it has melted again. So it looks likes the cleaning isn't working. (and it's not)





I think smaller wire like 20 or 22gauge would be alot easier there.
Click to expand...
See! I told you so! :D
 
thanks... hopefully my technique will be much better by the time I'm done with all of this :)

I actually tried to get some smaller gauge wire, but my local radio shack was strangely sold out of everything stranded in the smaller gauges ... they had 'speaker wire' in 18 gauge but this turned out to be not so good.... the insulation seems to have a much lower melting point and would constantly get smashed by the helping hands as soon as I tinned the wire...and bleeding onto the wires.... yuck.
 
Since we are on Wreath Central now, I'm thinking that LED technology could be converted over to holiday decorations. Could you do a write-up on that for us please?

Imagine long strands of LEDs, carefully wrapped in and out of wreaths, round and round on fir trees, and possibly even used outdoors on the facia board of our homes? If you can explain how to make them turn on and off, that would be even better. That phenomenon needs a name, too. Please give this some thought.
 
Here is a less powerful LED panel than one based one HPLEDs. This is one I just finished for a turf scrubber. It uses "super flux" LEDs which need 100mA rather than the 350 to 1000mA Soundwave used in his nice setup.

These could work for a shallower tank. I wouldn't try to use this style LED for a tank deeper than about a foot. One of the benefits is no cooling issues the LEDs have radiators built in. You can just use resistors for current limiting. No current drivers! But of course they are not as bright.

Since this is for growing algae it's just red and blue LEDs I used no white units.

Here I'm routing the copper clad board to create the required circuit traces. (I'm amazed the camera stopped the router chuck since it's turning 23,000rpm!)

fa2n8r7uyk.jpg


Here's the stuffed panel. A lot of soldering. 100 SFlux reds and 48 blues. Whew!

lnbc8rdsbx.jpg


Here it is lit up.

pq5bs0soc6.jpg
 
Wow this thread is awesome, I really wish I had the smarts to do this do bad some body doesn't make a kit...
This thread has me sold on LEDs and I really do think they are worth the high price, but when you think about it its not high at all :D
 
My build attempt

My build attempt

Hi All -

After much reading, I have deceided to tackle this project for my 225g tank (72 x 30 x 24h) - I would greatly appreciate any comments. Here is my plan:

Parts (major parts only) -

Heatsink - 2'
18 - Cree White LEDs mounted on star boards
18 - Royal Blue LEDs mounted on star boards
2 - Xitanium 25W 1050mA Off-line Dimming Driver (http://www.ledsupply.com/xi-led120a0024v10d.php )
2 - 120mm Fans
Wall Dimmer
Optics

Concept -

My desire is to create a lighting system with enough light to support a decent SPS colony. I am going to create 3 of these 2' panels which will run front to back on the tank. The 2' heat sink will have 2 groups of 18 LEDs (each group with 9 white / 9 blue) and each group will be spaced evenly on the heatsink.

I came up with the number 36 because each drive can handle 18 LEDs. I choose this driver because I can do without a power supply and it can be dimmed easily. Comparing the cost of this driver to 6 buck pucks and a power supply, this is a cheaper and more compact route.

Problems / questions:

* Is this going to be enough light? It doesn't feel like it, but at more than $600 per panel, adding another few panels gets cost prohibitive (or at least I might as well get the Aqua Illuminations with all of the toys)...
* Which type of optics should I be looking at?
* What can I do to power the fans without getting another power supply?

Thanks in advance...
 
I am confused.... why can you get by with 2 of the Xitaniums but would require 6 buckpucks?? To me looks like they have the same output. You posted a 24v 1.05a driver...

There are 32v 1a buckpucks, which is even more output. Did I miss something? How did you figure that 25w could power 18 LEDs? What is the Vf of the LED's you are using? They'd have to be pretty low wattage to fit 18 on 25w.
 
I am just going by the datashet (http://www.ledsupply.com/docs/xitanium-120v-drivers.pdf ) - It says that it can handle up to18 - 1 watt LED's.

I am no electrician, but I am guessing that it has something to do with the way it gets wired up. Their diagram shows 6 LEDS wired in series, and then 3 sets of those all wired together in parallel and attached to one driver. The driver puts 350mA across each of the parallel lines...

Shawn
 
Driving in parallel has been discussed many times in this thread... the more experienced guys are recommending against it since if one LED in one of the series goes, it will end up redirecting current into the other series which will overdrive them and burn them up. It's possible to use more electronics and carefully design a system to safeguard against this, but the general consensus is that its easier/safer/cheaper to simply wire things in series and get LEDs that are matched to the drivers.

I'm sure some of these experienced people will chime in. I learned most of this from this very thread so perhaps I'm not the best one to be telling you, but maybe at least I can convince you to hold off for a bit and get more information first.

I think its a shame they dont make the Xitanium drivers in lower current, higher voltage configurations (like a 32v 700ma for example, instead its 12w 700ma).
 
Yea - I am definitely holding off until I get more input, but I assume that since the driver is designed to work in parallel that it would be ok...
 
fernandokng; Still not showing? They show for me.


adova; ReefEnabler has it - Parallel is evil.

That is just a specsmanship game the driver people play. "You can drive a zillion LEDs with our driver." -If you run them in parallel-

This is the same as saying "This car will travel 200 miles on a gallon of gas". -Only if it's all down hill-

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14746492#post14746492 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by adova
I am definitely holding off until I get more input, but I assume that since the driver is designed to work in parallel that it would be ok...
Click to expand...

The current driver doesn't care about the LEDs It just puts out a given current. Go back up-thread and look at the the discussion on parallel.





As for fans.. You either need line voltage fans or or a wall wart.
 
Ok - back to the buck pucks then, I guess - and I will just use the power supply for them to run the fans.

Any suggestion as to the # of LEDs / "panels" I am going to need for my application? And optic suggestions?
 
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