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Innovative Marine Aquariums

Repurpose PAR 38 bulb?


mechishark7

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Hey so has anyone disassembled a PAR 38 bulb and pulled all the guts out of it to make it into a new lighting fixture, i.e. a slimmer light by attaching it all to a heat sink?

 

I've never taken one apart, but seeing how much goes into buying a DIY LED setup, LEDs, drivers, power supply etc, sometimes it runs way more than a comparable PAR 38 bulb which I'm assuming has a driver and power supply considering you twist it into a socket and it goes on?

 

Just curious if anyone has already done this or not, I would love to take mine apart but that would leave my reef in the dark if I ended up breaking the light.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Par38 is a driver and a PCB with the LEDs mounted, not much to them.

 

I'm not sure I understand what you meant by making one slimmer. The par38 has a large heat sink bc it is cooled passively( no fans) so it needs the surface area.

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Par38 is a driver and a PCB with the LEDs mounted, not much to them.

 

I'm not sure I understand what you meant by making one slimmer. The par38 has a large heat sink bc it is cooled passively( no fans) so it needs the surface area.

I'm guessing he means removing the guts and mounting to a block like heatsink (similar to an Ai or Radion fixture etc.).

 

I can't see it not working. Yes the body of the fixture houses the driver and LED etc, so I guess you could even cluster a few of them together onto a single heatsink if you wanted to. You would just need to splice the power that usually goes to the screw bayonet to a power plug. You would have no channel control but depending on the PAR38 that you start with you could dimm the fixture. You would most likely need to have an active fan for cooling though.

 

This is basically what your left with on the inside:

http://reefbuilders.com/files/2009/12/par-38-led-spotlight-11.jpg

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