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Cultivated Reef

My take on the cluster


bpaston

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Well I have been lurking long enough and working on a project silently in the background. Since the begining of the cluster rage I have been taking notes from Evil and Jedi, and am about to embark on the journey so here we go. Below is some pics of what I have gathered so far...

 

 

 

post-47139-0-21395800-1400033963_thumb.jpg

 

 

 

Here we have the 90CRI Vero 10's, luxeon z cyan and blue, and the optic for the project.

 


post-47139-0-37628600-1400034178_thumb.jpg

And in this pic is the circuit boards that will be doing the legwork for these lights.

 

 

The overall plan is to design and develop 5 seperate evil style MCPCB clusters revolving around a vero 10 as the center and using luxeon z for the colored leds, and luxeon m for the royal blue. The array will use a lens collimator as the optic. I think I shall deem it the Evil canon... :welcome: Please feel free to add your $.02 and hopefully I can lure Evil and Jedi and maybe get ther $.02 also.

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Im looking at running the following per cluster;

 

1 4k 90cri vero 10 BXRC-40G1000-B-03

4 luxeon m royal blue LXR0-SR00

8 luxeon z cyan LXZ1-PE01-0080

8 luxeon z blue LXZ1-PB01-0048

2 luxeon z lime LXZ1-PX01-0184

6 luxeon uv

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How are you going to attach vero, which is already a metal base to another mcpcb? Or are you making a custom donut-shaped mcpcb? Either way, its going to be costly. :)

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It will have hole in the middle roughly 21cm x 21cm to accomadate the vero. Project will probably be costly but still be less than 5 ecoxotic canons priced anywhere from $600-$800 a piece.

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jedimasterben

Holy bajeezus that's gonna be killer. What size tank will these be going over? If it's not deeper than 36", then you don't need your clusters to be that powerful!

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Holy bajeezus that's gonna be killer. What size tank will these be going over? If it's not deeper than 36", then you don't need your clusters to be that powerful!

Yes it will! LOL the tank is 24" deep x 60" long x 18" wide and will be based around SPS, but the lights will also be mounted a little over 4' above tank recessed into the ceiling. I also do not expect to be running these anywhere near 100% or at 1 amp. But I will have to figure out my drive currents once built and mounted with use of a par meter, and pick which LDDs I will use then. I am hoping to hear from your thread soon about the use of the limes. Because at this point im conflicted on using limes or waiting for a luxeon z PC amber to come around. But based off of what I can see the lime would be better suited to fill in the missing spectrum of the 4k vero 10. Opposed to the information given in the led array build article in advance aquarist, whereas they are saying the PC amber would give better rendetiion than the lime. But again they are not based around a 4k vero they are using 3w rebels.

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jedimasterben

Ah gotcha. Yeah, 6' to the bottom of the tank is, uh, insane lol. You'll want to use tight optics. :)

 

If you are interested, I have eight PCB that have 2x Luxeon UV on them (one 425nm and one 405nm) and half have 2x blue, the other half have 1x blue 1x cyan that I won't be using for my build.

 

PC amber is only necessary for making up for poor CRI of your white LEDs since they won't be too great with non-fluorescent colors, but since you're starting off with 90CRI Veros, the lime would be better.

 

 

Damn, I'm still thinking that 6' is going to be problematic lol. For just the Vero, it looks like if you make them be around 8" apart, using a lens that is ~20 degrees you'll average 60 PAR with the LEDs at full current. Hopefully that lens you have will collimate to around that angle!

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Ah gotcha. Yeah, 6' to the bottom of the tank is, uh, insane lol. You'll want to use tight optics. :)

 

If you are interested, I have eight PCB that have 2x Luxeon UV on them (one 425nm and one 405nm) and half have 2x blue, the other half have 1x blue 1x cyan that I won't be using for my build.

 

PC amber is only necessary for making up for poor CRI of your white LEDs since they won't be too great with non-fluorescent colors, but since you're starting off with 90CRI Veros, the lime would be better.

 

 

Damn, I'm still thinking that 6' is going to be problematic lol. For just the Vero, it looks like if you make them be around 8" apart, using a lens that is ~20 degrees you'll average 60 PAR with the LEDs at full current. Hopefully that lens you have will collimate to around that angle!

Yeah 6' is the design hurdle I am looking at. The current lens I have is nice in the since that I can control the distance mounted from the leds allowing me to tighten up the pattern, which I believe realistically I can get down to about 10 degrees maybe even 5.

 

I am glad to see you are along the same lines as me, I could not see the spectral significance in using PC amber in this array over lime looking at the graph for the 4k veros. But I have still not been able to find the new graph that shows the data for the 90cri vero, I am guessing it will look something close to the decor series 97cri. The only hurdle I have here is never having used the lime leds in the z package I dont know if I should go with 2 or 4 in the setup, and at the same time for every lime I use I give up a spot for the uv led. Decisions....decisions lol.

 

Thanks for the offer on the pcbs but this project has its own mcpcb that I have custom designed and am getting ready to produce. All leds will sit within a 35mm square area on an overall 100mm square pcb, so they would not be much use to me.

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jedimasterben

Ok, so the lens will let you get down that far, sweet.

 

How much is your custom PCB costing? Are you basically just carving out the middle to stick the Vero into?

 

I've been told before that the 90CRI chips look very similar to the Decor spectrum, but that datasheet has a friendly 'do not share' on it :)

 

I knew you wouldn't need the PCB, but you could flow the Luxeon UV off of it. I have no use for them and you're about the only person I've seen that is going to use them and isn't completely offput by the cost lol.

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Ok, so the lens will let you get down that far, sweet.

 

How much is your custom PCB costing? Are you basically just carving out the middle to stick the Vero into?

 

I've been told before that the 90CRI chips look very similar to the Decor spectrum, but that datasheet has a friendly 'do not share' on it :)

 

I knew you wouldn't need the PCB, but you could flow the Luxeon UV off of it. I have no use for them and you're about the only person I've seen that is going to use them and isn't completely offput by the cost lol.

Custom PCB cost is still in the air so far but my estimate is $100 for the die setup which I have already covered, and no more than $10 per copper board. And the middle will be a square hole 21mm x 21mm to accomadate the vero, so this will basically hug the vero from all sides. My goal was to get the array as tightly spaced as possible.

 

I wish I could get my hands on that data sheet. ::ninja::

 

Didnt even think of flowing them off and using them, how much would you want for them. Right now the cheapest I have found the UVs for is around $25, but I am looking for the 650s is that what you have on there right now?

 

Also how did you estimate 60par from the vero using a 20 degree optic at 6'?

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jedimasterben

Custom PCB cost is still in the air so far but my estimate is $100 for the die setup which I have already covered, and no more than $10 per copper board. And the middle will be a square hole 21mm x 21mm to accomadate the vero, so this will basically hug the vero from all sides. My goal was to get the array as tightly spaced as possible.

Damn - not bad. Wish it would fit on a heatsink that is 1.7" wide lol

 

Didnt even think of flowing them off and using them, how much would you want for them. Right now the cheapest I have found the UVs for is around $25, but I am looking for the 650s is that what you have on there right now?

The 425nm is 650 bin, the 405nm is 550 (the 650 was unavailable). I got them for ~$13 each, you can have them for less, shoot me a PM.

 

Also how did you estimate 60par from the vero using a 20 degree optic at 6'?

Using hoppy's PAR calculator from plantedtank.net. You just put in the lumens, the LED spacing, height, optic angle, and if there is more than one row and it does the rest. Can't find my link for it though.

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Damn - not bad. Wish it would fit on a heatsink that is 1.7" wide lol

 

The 425nm is 650 bin, the 405nm is 550 (the 650 was unavailable). I got them for ~$13 each, you can have them for less, shoot me a PM.

 

Using hoppy's PAR calculator from plantedtank.net. You just put in the lumens, the LED spacing, height, optic angle, and if there is more than one row and it does the rest. Can't find my link for it though.

Thats a good reference for the calculator, thank you. I will be putting that to use to estimate this project.

 

As far as fitting one on a 1.7" wide heatsink we may be able to make something if you were interested, but the downside is the cost of the die setup. But I have been thinking if there was enough interest to make something smaller with less leds, I would be willing to design and have boards made to sell at a decent price.

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jedimasterben

That's the big problem - you need one design, I want another, all the others on my thread that are making clusters would all probably want different designs lol. I'm not using any lenses on mine, so I don't need it to be round and it needs to fit into a thin rectangular bit, but you do since you're using that big lens, etc.

 

Too many choices for this sort of thing to be a one-size fits all, especially since very few people would be interested since they would need to reflow their own LEDs onto it. I have tried a couple of times before and completely effed it up lol

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holy carp. that's a lot of soldering pads really close together'

It is not only very tight assemblies, it is a special SinkPAD II assemblies :)

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It is not only very tight assemblies, it is a special SinkPAD II assemblies :)

Its very impressive looking. :)

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jedimasterben

But I would rather burn myself with the soldering iron than solder that many pads that are so tiny lol. Hopefully that isn't the final PCB revision and something like Molex connectors will be added :)

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Have to agree with Ben here.

 

To many tiny pads. Kind of frightens people away from the product unless they're confident in their soldering skills

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Have to agree with Ben here.

 

To many tiny pads. Kind of frightens people away from the product unless they're confident in their soldering skills

I agree which is why I am running a pico-lock molex connector on mine. Makes the overall pcb slightly larger but the tradeoff is no soldering it is plug and play.

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But I would rather burn myself with the soldering iron than solder that many pads that are so tiny lol. Hopefully that isn't the final PCB revision and something like Molex connectors will be added :)

This module is designed for professional installation only. We do not plan to sell it as a standalone product. There's no need, because we are confident that the projectors on its basis will be well sold :)

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Well here is the first draft of the final layout put together. Now to work on trace widths and spacing, while maintaining hopefully the same overall footprint of the leds.... :wacko:


post-47139-0-93318800-1400288404_thumb.png

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Well here is the first draft of the final layout put together. Now to work on trace widths and spacing, while maintaining hopefully the same overall footprint of the leds.... :wacko:

attachicon.gifphoto.PNG

 

 

Awesome.

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