Thanks Evil for the spacing advice. I should have this sink drilled and tapped by tomorrow morning. Stupid stupid work. Thats gonna keep me from having all the LEDs mounted and soldered up until probably mid week.

well???? what was the final decision on the spacing? lol i must have read the last 2 pages twicw but i didn't see the spacing.

Oops that was taken care of via PM. Didnt mean to leave you hanging Dennis. Evil / I decided to go with 2.5" on centers. I took the sink to the hospital today and punched the holes into it. I should hopefully have them all tapped by tonight. Then I am gonna drill a buncha more holes just to hide the wires. Thats been one of my biggest quams about other builds. I hate seeing wires. No punches intended towards anyone who has wires showing. Just my personal OCD problems. Pictures to come.

Well here is the sink with the LED's mounted. Drilling and tapping went about as good as could be expected. I had the tap snap with two holes left. Luckly the tap snapped off deep enough that I could rechase the threads and use a screw that was cut short by 5 threads. So now I have to go tomorrow and purchase a new 4-40 tap. I used a dubro tap used for hobby service. I lubed it with Fluid Film. Google them and sign up for the free sample of that stuff. Great stuff.

Here is a pic of the sink with the LED's mounted and the wiring diagram sketched on the face. The wires will be threaded through the sink and hid on the back side.

WELL........






....I am so over tryin to tap the final friggin hole. After breakin three taps on the dang thing I am giving up on it. Seriously. I have tried to drill/tap 3 different locations for one of the LEDs and have snapped every friggin tap off. I am sure that this d@mn heatsink has a hard spot in it. You could not have been any easier on the taps. Hell I am even gonna have to go get a 4th tap just so I can mount the sink into the hood. This time I am gonna buy a spiral fluted tap. No more of the three fluted straight taps for JP.

Positive notes. I did rough in wiring on the leds. All fire great. I did how ever forget to wear my welding hood when I lit these dudes up. How come NO ONE warned me on that one. I am seriously not feeling the love on this one. But hey the little yellow dots should keep me entertained for a few days. The wire that I purchased yesterday was solid. Stupid mistake on my behalf. So tomorrow I am gonna go get stranded wire and try to get the holes drilled in the heatsink to chase the wires through. That is if there are no satanic hard spots anywhere else. Hopefully by the weekend I should be able to start figuring out fan placement and whatnot.

Oh I am not including pics of wiring that is just for testing purposes and leds lit up. By now I hope that all of us have seen them.

hahaha! the no warning on the lights is like a hazing! welcome to the club(if you can still see to find it!)

it is easier to use stranded wires but i used solid on all of mine. it is fine

I went through the exact same thing -__-
And the box that your Aquapod came in is awesome Good luck on the LED setup!

Thanks for my induction Dennis. Good times. With my wires being snaked I think I am gonna go with stranded. That way the unidirectional movements that the wire will be placed in will not cause undue wear on the jacket.

Yea I liked that box alot. But my pod didnt come in that. My rock came in that box. I thought about keeping it and cutting a few holes in it for my 2 year olds halloween costume this year. Momma said nope!

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I am so damn mad at the moment. I spent the last 3 hours snaking wires, soldering them to the LEDS....Then I hooked up the only untested puck I had. I had used one puck to test the LEDS last night. One string at a time.

This is how it went.
LED's fired, dim. I adjusted the pot. Not much change. THEN the puck started with this durn high pitch tone LEDS went CRAZY BRIGHT then out. This all happened within what I would say was less than two seconds. Well faster than I could unplug the powersupply which was right at my left hand. Now I am left with two burnt out blues and one burnt out white. Dont ask I soldered one white into the line of blues. Forgot to mark that one.. Oh that puck was so hot I could barely touch it. I tested each led and they were all isolated from the heatsink so there were no shorts to be found in the circuits.

What the heck could have caused this run away puck? Dennis save me some leds bro. Looks like the gremlins are gonna eat mine. I think I am gonna walk away from this project for a few days.

Well I talked to Zack at Luxdrive today. He is gonna replace the LEDs and the puck. Along with a fellow member, he and I are baffled at why the puck didnt completly fail and fuse itself to save the LEDs. Now its time to really look into the setup and see if I have missed anything that could have caused this.

Well after looking indepth at the wiring I found nothing at all that would have triggered any failure. I even went so far as to remove all the wires, resolder new wires in and retest. With the 1st puck and the remaining LEDs. All worked flawlessly. So who knows. Hopefully tomorrow I can get the damaged goods into the mail and get this thing finished.

Sorry for the dull post, but busted LED's dont make good pics.

Not to worry dude. There have been many such odd failures of Buckpucks for no seemingly good reason. If it wasn't for the fact that there aren't any other good alternatives, I wouldn't use them any more. When they work, they work. When they fail, it's a mystery sometimes as to why.

Oh, welcome to the bleeding eyeball club

any updates? I have a aquapod12 myself and am looking forword to seeing yours before i start..

Sorry not any yet. Hopefully in the next few weeks this project will be wrapped up. I am waiting on LuxDrive to return the damaged goods.

How/Why did you pick the size of the heat sink?

How: I asked Evil and Deepvrnarq what size I would need. Then I think we finally decided to stuff as big of one in as we could.

Why: If you dont have one big enough the poss. of blowing your LED's gets greater.

Did you figure out on how to get the lid off? It seems as if it doesnt come off to be put back on.

I found this. If you open the lid about half way and pull up the hinges will come apart alot easier. I have had my top off so much that it will snap apart much more easy now. Gettin it back on is a bit of a pain, but nothing a little bit of force cannot fix.

slut!

Ha Ha you got me Dennis.

Okay for all the three people that are following this thread..Here is the update.

Luxdrives customer service at the moment is unexistant. I cannot get any returned phone calls, or emails. So at this moment they have one of my pucks and two of the LED's. I am not going to hack into the hood b4 I have all the supplies back in my hand. As its looking at the moment I may have to buy more stuff due to Luxdips not wanting to play nice.

We are watching buddy.



....bastids.

LOL I am glad you got my back Richie!

Luxdrive. I was just telling my wife today that I was thinking about starting a thread about the poor customer service that they have. I am now up to 6 phone calls w/o the first response. I am sure that with all the problems that they have had with their drivers that the thread would be explosive. Once it grew up into a nice little thread I would Email the link ZACK @ Luxdrive "wink wink". I am not sure, but I think that would get some little attention.

Unfortunately that may just be the best way to get a response at this point.

Also a good way to let fellow reefers whats up and what to expect.

Sux this is taking so long for you....sweet looking build so far.

It has been unleashed.

Thanks Richie. I was sure wishing to have this thing done weeks ago. Now thanks to some uncapable incomp I have a really nice looking pile of stuff.

holy cow dude! i forgot to send you the LEDs. i will send them today or tomorrow. haha pun intended

Dude that ones Deep . You not only forgot to send them, but you forgot your addy so that I could send you your white ones.

Okay fellow followers I need some help. I need to find some really small fans. I mean like 1.25" square x I dunno no more than .5" thick. I know that they are made I use to buy them from allelectronics.com. But I can not seam to find them anywhere. The closest I can find is 40 mm square x 10 mm http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store...LING-FAN/1.html
or
http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store...LING-FAN/1.html

This one is a 5v smaller fan.
http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store...LING-FAN/1.html
The only big diff that I can see in these two fans is 2 mm in thickness and the number and size ogf blades. Which one would you go with?
So if your needing something to search 4 can you help me find the unicorn. I am planning on mounting these on the side of the heatsink and blow across the entire thing.

Or does anyone see why this should not work. I am thinkin 4 or 5 fans. 2 on one side and 2 or 3 on the other side this way one side of the sink would not be cooler than the other.

Thanks to Dennis my fan delima has been resolved. As soon as slowpoke paypal gets funds transfered they will be shipped. As time has passed my mind never stopped mind tinkering. After some thought I deciede to add two UV leds powered by a 700MH puck. So back to the drill press and taps. I am looking forward to getting this build wrapped up.

is your sink just a big alum sheet or is there fins on the opposite side?

Its finned.

is there any way you can get a pic? and did you custom machine it? im doing a retrofit myself

Sure, a pic of what part? I got the sink from heat sink USA. Way to much $$$ to burn off that much material. I did do all the tap work myself if thats what your asking.

im just curious what the sink looks like, im trying to mentally picture ideas for mine so im trolling others to see...

Sure post #91 has a pic I think number 5 has a slight side view. I will get a diff pic later or link you to one. http://www.heatsinkusa.com/smleth1fo.html If you want a top down view of the fins let me know.

ITEMS HAVE BEEN SHIPPED! yeah me! lol. it's on its way and shoud be there on friday or saturday. cant wait to see your's done also. i think im going to add uv's to my bc14 too to get that extra color and use those as moonlights too. it was good talking to you in person too. pitchers soon!

cool, i will look into it in the mean time im off to find this silicone..hopefully wally world has it..if not i must save the excitement for tomorrow. and also, i had read about the maxi 900 i'll look into it at the shop tomorrow. thanks again!

Glad to help paul. remember take pics.

Okay so I got a nice little package from Dennis today. Thanks alot, I loved it. You had my wife flyin off the couch to see what was going on in our bed room. Good times.

So now that I have all you wondering what I got. Well I got 2 UV leds, 2 new Royal Blue leds. "Thanks" and 4 Silent X fans. A volcano cigar and well. um ugh...I am so gonna just have to take pics of this. But well Dennis brought the sexy back to my tank. Just take my word for it, I now have the coolest fuge lights ever produced. Your just gonna have to wait for the build completions pics.

Sad thing is I am gonna have to wait to buy the 700mh puck for the uv's for a bit. The wife is gettin a bit huffy about all the $$ I am spending. I guess its time to get her another Coach bag.

you see i knew you'd like it...vegas style.
you would have to post a video for that one lol

Vegas up baby. You know if I could post a vid in a reply I would. But I think a pic is gonna have to do. I lazy. But it was funny that you sent a pole dancer and a pole with the fans. LOL I could go on for days with this one.

LOL Richie. See now your gonna have to watch closer. Kinda feel outta the loop dontcha? Sorry...But maybe a long ago chat about the B-ranch will bring you back up to speed.

All right...the time has come. The fans are in, all the LED's are placed. Wiring is in the layout stage. Oh and the dancer is on chrome.

Dennis. My front row of LEDs..The lens are just barely touching the stock splash guard. Do you think this will cause any problems?


Pics are soon to come.

no problems at all! the LEDs on my bc are smashed up against it and no problems so far. so no worries

did you wire the fans in 2 sets and in series in each set?

Great. Thanks. I just noticed somehting that pissed me of. Today I just had the hood shell sitting on top of the tank. Well luck would have it as the under cabnet halogen lights have warped three nice circle patterns in the hood. GRRRR.

how bad is it?

I can live with it. I just looks a bit wavy. Kinda itches the perfectionist in me though.

Okay Richie. RU tryin to be like Lisa and not use werds ne mor? Or are u just holdin our for mor pitchurs.

Waiting for the b-ranch, pole, wavy-ness I guess.

If not, pichers would be nice

Sorry 'bout the hood buddy.

Well after much time and tribulations she is done. Well all that can be completed at the moment.

Here is a pic with the blue and whites on turned to just a smidge above all the way off. I still cannot get over how bright these things are. My little clown fish scurried into the holes in the rock and were like



So lets start. I gutted the hood. Dont know what happend to the NO GUTS NO GLORY pic. But I cannot find it. No bother though it was just of the hood gutted with only the three factory switches installed. But for those who may wanna do this I used a diamond disk on my dremal and cut all the indented vents from the inside of the hood. Along with the flat sections of plastic that goes between the four screw post on the smaller fans.

I installed 4 Silent X fans "Thanks Dennis" on this setup. They come with 4 silicone bumpers in each fan. I found that these make a perfect mounting system.

Silicone bumpers.


I decided to use regular silicone to actually glue the two bigger fans into the hood. This in conjunction with the silicone bumpers isolates any vibs that the fan generate. Less vibs=less noise.



Now lets move to the wiring on this critter. I knew that I wanted to keep the stock look of the hood as well as it function. That was easier than ever expected. I used the power supply to power all the fans and the leds. By doing the I only needed one main power wire entering the hood. This left the hood wit one plug that hat a 1/4" hole in it. I filled this hile with clear silicone.



Wiring. Okay I'll admit it. I hate wires. I hate seeing them. I will take hours wiring something even if its going to be closed up like this hood. But neat wired are safe wires. In doing so I used a small breadboard. I know I was lazy and didnt feel like etching a nifty circuit board. Maybe later. Any way thid board allowed me to bring in the + and - terminals then neatly branch from that point.



As you can see I ran one common neutal across all three switches. Then dropped a neutral down to the board. This allows the fans to be turned on when the white led's are powered. Just like the stock light setup.

Here is a full shot of the hoods fans and wiring.



Well heres the rub on the LEDS.. I decided to go with a 4 x 3 setup. Alternating the LED's Blue white... After I had all the LED's mounted and wired Dennis inspired me to add two UV's So those went in the in the middle of the second row of LED's Look closely and you will see the black based LED's. Thats them. I have yet to pick up the 700MH Puck for those. But the hood has been drilled to accomidate the pot. Always gotta thing forward.



While looking at the heat sink sitting in the hood I couldnt figure out a clean way to mount it into the hood. I really hated the thought of messing the clean look up with some straps or L brackets. So...I used a little dab of silicone under the corners of the heatsink. Along with this the factory splash guard held in in just fine.



As a few others have done I decided to pilfer the mounting location of the pots. I really wanted them hid, but was unable to do so and still have the back of them protected from the water of the tank. So sadly they are in view.



The open hole will be used for the puck/pot that will drive the UV LED's. Now I've gotta find those knobs. I am actually thinking of trying to find some dome knobs. Thats just a quirk that I have. I dont want to have 1970's knobs on a hi-tech tank. Plus no one has domed knobs yet. I may have to make them. Oh well.

If you look closely at this pic you can see the small spot on the back left that got melted by the halogen lights.