DIY Luxim Plasma

What kind of coral are you going to try and grow under the plasma bulb? Have you put the light over water yet? I wonder if it shimmers in the tank like a MH over water. Im very interested in this idea and would like to buy/build this but was wondering what the electric bill will be like (how much would I save opposed to my current set up w/ 2 x 250se mh and 2 72" VHO for lighting...)

How durable does the whole set up seem?

Sorry for so many questions!
Cylix
 
Ok ... Got some new parts in. Triple Cree Royal Blue XP-E's mounted on a round 20mm board. I'm now thinking of 8 of them way up high on the angled facets maybe angled somewhat to fire horizontally or nearly so. That way light would hit opposite panes and be reflected in different angles down. Problem with mounting them flush with the upper facets is that the main path of the light would go obliquely just below the opposite facets and right up against the side aquarium wall.

Now what I REALLY need I think is a more parabolic reflector with facets. Any ideas on a DIY reflector or design anyone?

Anyway, I am going to have to wait on on the meanwell drivers because of a shortage. I was going to order them from nanotuners. This project should require two of the drivers.
 
Cymaster007 said:
What kind of coral are you going to try and grow under the plasma bulb? Have you put the light over water yet? I wonder if it shimmers in the tank like a MH over water. Im very interested in this idea and would like to buy/build this but was wondering what the electric bill will be like (how much would I save opposed to my current set up w/ 2 x 250se mh and 2 72" VHO for lighting...)

How durable does the whole set up seem?

Sorry for so many questions!
Cylix
Click to expand...

Sorry didn't see your Q's before. I was hoping mostly SPS. Not over water because I'm still working on my system. I'm sure it will shimmer. As far as replacing your current lights I think it won't be enough with just one for a 6ft spread without major shadows. If you used two, you wouldn't save any electricity. You would still need your actinics because of the current color spectrum of this bulb.

The bulb housing and igniter are beefy/solid and should do fine. The cable connecting the two might not withstand the humidity too well. It seems well made but are in a semi rigid zinc plated cable wrap.
 
All in one reflector. Tank is 3 ft high so I was looking at a couple 400w halides initially.

45" x 36" x 30"

Ultimately I may go with 6 Aquaillumination modules but wanted to give this a try first.
 
Managed to work on this for a couple hours. Thought I'd post a minor update. The LED's work, and with half of them running, it seems to improve color temperature quite a bit. Now as long as spread is good, this should work out fine. The blue LED's are Cree Royal Blue's ... 24 of them, 3 on each 20mm round MCPCB from Cutter in Australia, obviously serially wired. Each one is on a small round heatsink, also from Cutter. I'll probably attach a largish fan to the top of the plasma heatsink and the airflow should run through these small round heatsinks as well since everything is so tightly clustered in the top panel of the Lumenarc reflector. 12 run off each Meanwell that I plan on using to adjust color temperature to desired with their analog dimming function via a controller.

Pics ...

plasmaled001.jpg

plasmaled002.jpg

plasmaled003.jpg
 
kentrob11 said:
Nice! Looking forward to seeing it running...
Click to expand...

Yeah, me too. Gotta get some heatshrink tubing to finish it off.

I'm not sure I would have tried to put these in the top panel if it weren't for your suggestion. Thanks! I was very surprised when i received the LED boards at how small they were. They could fit almost anywhere ... Where they are right now is a tight fit with the small pin-fin heatsinks for the LED's right up against the round heatsink for the plasma bulb. I'm going to take advantage of this proximity and mount a 120mm fan right on top of the plasma heatsink. This should also serve to cool the LED heatsinks ...
 
I think you did a great job implementing those LEDs into the reflector :) I still haven't rulled out the possibility of plasma over the 3000 I'm doing so I'm watching this one closely..I'm glad to see you're making progress with it! I would also venture to say that with 24 blues, you would be able to run the plasma at near full power without it being too yellow...neat!
 
Yes...I'm building a new home and am working with the concrete subcontractor to pout a 11x8x6 concrete tank with a 10 x 4 viewing pane. Obviously lighting is going to be an area where I want to go as efficient as possible so projects like these present interesting solutions...
 
Some more progress ...

The blue seems to make a difference (obviously), but I'm not sure if it will be enough. I shot some pictures with a Nikon D200 manual mode with white balance at manual 6300K and aperture fixed at f6.3. There was no postprocessing other than sizing and RAW-jpg conversion. The floor shots with the paper and glass are shot at 1/200 shutter.

plamaled003.jpg


Plasma with LED:
plamaled004.jpg


Plasma alone:
plamaled005.jpg


Shots of the lights inside the reflector follow. First is at 1/400s shutter:
plamaled006.jpg


1/1000s:
plamaled007.jpg


1/2000s:
plamaled008.jpg


1/8000s:
plamaled009.jpg

plamaled010.jpg


Plasma alone @ 1/8000s:
plamaled011.jpg

plamaled012.jpg
 
kentrob11 said:
Yes...I'm building a new home and am working with the concrete subcontractor to pout a 11x8x6 concrete tank with a 10 x 4 viewing pane. Obviously lighting is going to be an area where I want to go as efficient as possible so projects like these present interesting solutions...
Click to expand...

Wow. I thought that was a typo :) With a tank that size, I would recommend that you at least try to supplement with natural sunlight. Is that possible in your build at all? I look forward to your build!

edwing206 said:
Wow, amazing work! I'd love to see some over the tank shots. Keep us posted!
Click to expand...

Thanks. I'll order the tubing for the light rack sometime soon. A local machinist has a bunch of my heatsinks and hopefully within a few weeks I'll have some custom 7" square heatsinks for my DIY LED's. Now I just need to figure out how to get a Profilux to control so many Meanwell drivers, but those are all other stories ... So hopefully over the tank within a few weeks ...
 
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