LED Heatsink Outline
- Thread starter MattM3
- Start date
mcgyvr
New member
I always find these types of posts funny..
I think these types of drawings can tell a lot about a person..
I'm calling it "Disco Psychology"..
"Sir..please sit down and try to come up with an evenly spaced pattern of these pre-selected different colored dots
oh boy..
I can tell you have a slight case of ADHD :crazy1:
Now pay me.."
I think these types of drawings can tell a lot about a person..
I'm calling it "Disco Psychology"..
"Sir..please sit down and try to come up with an evenly spaced pattern of these pre-selected different colored dots
oh boy..
I can tell you have a slight case of ADHD :crazy1:
Now pay me.."
TropTrea
New member
Some ideas here.
1. set it up as a right side and a left side that mirror each other. Your tank has a center bar and you do want LE'ds directly over the center bar as they will give your a shadow. You want about a 4" strip down the center that are LED free.
2. Your using both Philips and Cree LED's Royal Blue. for simplicity use either one brand or the other I prefer the Cree 5 Watt units. There is a very slight difference in these not worth going to the extra trouble of running both types.
3. You want your LED's of the same color as evenly dispursed across the tank as possible. This means front to back as well as horizontaly. As I see your lights you have a browd Blue strip down the back and a bright white strip down the middle. Split the whites ul between the front middle and back rows. Do the same for the blues and royal blues.
4. You have Royal Blue moonlights. If you set about 4 of your blue LED's to run on a seperate driver at 700ma by themselves you will have roughly the same effect with less expense. and these Blues can double for your regular lighting as well.
5. Your using a lot of LED's total. This is great when your running the LED's at 1 to 1.5 watts each but if you use them at full wattage your going to have a very powerful light probably two powerful.
6. You have 10 Neutral Whites. The neutral whites are very strong white chips and you can easily get away with 8 of them. 10 Neutral white chips will easily outpower 20 to even 30 Blue Chips giving you a color temp in the 10K to 12 K range. If you want to keep that many you want them on a dimmable driver and may find yourself even running them at less than 1/2 power dependent on your color taste.
7. Your showing 8 UV LED's I used to run 6 of them on my 120 Gallon but I dropped down to 4 of them. A little UV lighting goes a long way but adding more does not give you that much much more of anything unless you running the UVs alone to get some super florescense with everything else almost black.
1. set it up as a right side and a left side that mirror each other. Your tank has a center bar and you do want LE'ds directly over the center bar as they will give your a shadow. You want about a 4" strip down the center that are LED free.
2. Your using both Philips and Cree LED's Royal Blue. for simplicity use either one brand or the other I prefer the Cree 5 Watt units. There is a very slight difference in these not worth going to the extra trouble of running both types.
3. You want your LED's of the same color as evenly dispursed across the tank as possible. This means front to back as well as horizontaly. As I see your lights you have a browd Blue strip down the back and a bright white strip down the middle. Split the whites ul between the front middle and back rows. Do the same for the blues and royal blues.
4. You have Royal Blue moonlights. If you set about 4 of your blue LED's to run on a seperate driver at 700ma by themselves you will have roughly the same effect with less expense. and these Blues can double for your regular lighting as well.
5. Your using a lot of LED's total. This is great when your running the LED's at 1 to 1.5 watts each but if you use them at full wattage your going to have a very powerful light probably two powerful.
6. You have 10 Neutral Whites. The neutral whites are very strong white chips and you can easily get away with 8 of them. 10 Neutral white chips will easily outpower 20 to even 30 Blue Chips giving you a color temp in the 10K to 12 K range. If you want to keep that many you want them on a dimmable driver and may find yourself even running them at less than 1/2 power dependent on your color taste.
7. Your showing 8 UV LED's I used to run 6 of them on my 120 Gallon but I dropped down to 4 of them. A little UV lighting goes a long way but adding more does not give you that much much more of anything unless you running the UVs alone to get some super florescense with everything else almost black.
Or maybe a bit of both :lolspin:
From experience the "clustered approach does the best job blending LED colors and eliminating disco. Linear arrays can work also with enough of each color but I'd scrap #1 thru #3 and try a gain.
Divide everything up into even clusters with the same number of each color in each cluster and mount the LEDs in each cluster as close as possible. then spread out the clusters.........
I also recommend not drinking when designing things in sketchup, bad things usually happen :beer:
I would have to disagree a bit here, I run more "UVs" than Royal Blues and find that to be the best look for my tanks, plus the over all look is a bit whiter with more flourescence that way. You really cannot over do the UV LED's unless you find them to not look good. (3:1 UV to RB, but I started the other way around and kept fiddling until I liked it)
Trop's eyes see violet as pink, most people don't see it much at all and only see the added glow of thier coral. my eyes see a very dull light pale blue from only UV leds, but a lot of this has to due with the genetics of the viewer :lolspin: ...not pickin on you Trop, just have different eyes!
TropTrea
New member
Yes there is some truth here. For me Royal blues look considerably more purple than true blues while many people claim they cannot tell the two apart. I have tried different so called UV chips and will say some look very pink to me compared to others.
But I did do an experiment a while back by lighting a tank with various different corals that floresced nicely. I lit the tank with several different chips all of the same type at one time. I did notice that very distinctly that different wavelenghts of light caused the same corals to floresce completly different colors. The two chips that seemed to give me the most florescense though was a 430nm chip and a 455 nm chip. The ones that gave me the least florescense was a 380nm chip ad a 520 nm chip. The 380 gave near 0 visable light and the 520 star4ted making everything look green to start with with only a little red-orange that florescesed.
On a side note it has been proven that biggest cause of eye cataracs is suposed to be near UV and UV light. This is why they recommend UV filtering sungalss when outside as well avoiding nightclubs with a lot of UV disco lighting especialy when you get older. For this reason I leary on using a lot of UV light in my tanks as well.
Yes, but MH and flourescent have more "UV" litght 400-430nm than almost any LED fixture, especially the comecial ones. All you need do is look at the data sheets for different light sources to see this. Most LED fixtures have comparativeily very small amounts of "UV" light compared to MH and flourescent. If like me you like the good old VHO actinics then there is no substitute for a tone of violet LEDs and no other way to repicate that same look. Especially if you want a tank that is less blue and still has great flourescenc.
TropTrea
New member
Yes both MY's and T-5's put out more UV lighting. However most of them recommend using even a clear glass shield to reduce the UV lighting. I use acrylic on my shielding of LED's and T-5's that does not effect the UV lighting at 410nm by more than 5%. with polucarbonate reduces it by 80% and some glass reduces it by as much as 95%.
No I never ws a fanatic for the old Atinic bulbs. To me they produced more of a blue purple color or even a pink caste unlike what is seen in the actual ocean. If you ever dd any diving the deeper you go the deeper blue the water is it does not turn purple but blue. This is because the deeper you go into the water tha more UV is naturaly filtered out at a faster rate than the the truer blue colors are. But the ocean does not filter out UV light as fast is does the longer wave lenghts like the reds.
Now when you look at the phoitosynthesis charts for lighting you find that most of the chemicals are using light in the blue part of the spectrum rather than the UV spectrums. So for growth there is limited benifit to large quantities of UV lighting. Yes some is needed but not nearly as much can be utailized as in the bluer wavelenghts.
Now add the latest reports from the medical community on the dangers of UV lighting that were said in the past to be only UVA and UVB lighting extending up not to the 400nm range and I perfer to put off getting my catarac surgery for a few more years. There are even warning now about the dangers of using compact florescent household bulbs for thios reason. Sure t probably over stated but it is a fact that people are needing catarac surgery at earlier ages today. Only 20 years ago the average was in the late 80's but today it is in the early 70's, Will it be in the 40's or 50's in another 20 years? What about my grandkids that love spending hours looking at my tanks? Am I destroying there eyes unintentionaly?
Ok, so taking a little bit of everyone's advice, here is what I have come up with. I am quite happy with it.
I basically took how many of each LED I had, divided them up by the total distance of the tank, and then did the best I could to distribute them on the depth of the 6" heat sink. They followed more of a cluster, and I really believe this is the best way to get an even distribution across the tank. BTW the black in the center is the brace of the tank.
The only thing I am not certain on is if I should spread out the moon lights or the UV LEDS more on the 6" depth of the heat sink rather them being more centered.
Thanks everoh look at the kitten...
I basically took how many of each LED I had, divided them up by the total distance of the tank, and then did the best I could to distribute them on the depth of the 6" heat sink. They followed more of a cluster, and I really believe this is the best way to get an even distribution across the tank. BTW the black in the center is the brace of the tank.
The only thing I am not certain on is if I should spread out the moon lights or the UV LEDS more on the 6" depth of the heat sink rather them being more centered.
Thanks everoh look at the kitten...
TropTrea
New member
This should work. My only remaining concersn is instead of the moon light you put the 3 watt Royal Blues on a dimmer for the same effect.
My first LED build was suposed to be a moonlight bar it was 6 3 watt royal blues running at 350ma or about 1 watt each. It was too bringht on my 120 gallon so I got a dimmable driver and ran them at around 200 ma or close to 1/2 Watt each. A little brighter than most comercial moon lights but Iloved the florescense it created. I uped the strip to 8 Royal Blues, 4 UV's and 4 TrueBlues that I now run at 700ma for a predawn to post dusk effect. The florescense pops almost like a comic book or cartoon movie at night.
My first LED build was suposed to be a moonlight bar it was 6 3 watt royal blues running at 350ma or about 1 watt each. It was too bringht on my 120 gallon so I got a dimmable driver and ran them at around 200 ma or close to 1/2 Watt each. A little brighter than most comercial moon lights but Iloved the florescense it created. I uped the strip to 8 Royal Blues, 4 UV's and 4 TrueBlues that I now run at 700ma for a predawn to post dusk effect. The florescense pops almost like a comic book or cartoon movie at night.
Similar threads
