glazer Posted April 5, 2011 Share Posted April 5, 2011 Thought I'd share..... I've had several people ask me about making some kind of housing for a led build they are planning but they seem to get lost in the details of what they are looking for exactly. I've offered up several ideas ( I gotta million of them...lol) but seems I haven't gotten to the typed "thousand words" for a single picture point yet. I have a friend of mine that is taking down his JBJ picotope and giving it to me so as it turns out I need a light myself. So here's what I've got going so far.... almost done with it. This was built using a 4 whatever" by 8" heatsink from heatsinkusa. I decided that six leds for a three gallon tank should be plenty... plus by running three leds per buckpuck I could utilize one of my 12v power supplys I already had. I bought 3 XP-E Royal Blues and 3 XP-E Q4 cool whites. The color listed for the Q4s was 5000K so I thought this would be a good choice. After doing a bunch of reading and especially seeing comments by Evil I chose the 700ma dimmable buckpucks... guess the 1000ma 'pucks have some longevity issues? Alright, let's get on with some pics...... Leds all pasted on to the 'sink and soldered up... man those things are tiny. I'm an "old dude", yes, I had to break out the magnifying glass to even tell which pads on the Indus stars were pos and neg...lol So I know the saying about a cluttered desk... is a cluttered workbench a sign of "creative" genius? I'll pretend that it is so I feel better about the mess. I've got the housing built but didn't think to document that in pictures.... I live in the shop so taking pics of every move on the saw or router seems kinda silly. Heatsink "dropped" in place and the wiring continues. By the way....I spent a lot of time looking in to what fan to use. I ended up using an Enermax Marathon UC-8EB. It's an 80mm fan (could have gone smaller but got tired of looking at fans..lol) It's rated to move 24 cfm of air (waaaaay more than enough) but most importantly it has a 14 decibal noise rating. It's just about as close to dead silent as you can get... I can't hear it running at all. Oh yeah, and it was 8 bucks at the local big box computer store. Everything in the box and ready to go...... I knew what kind of stance I needed for the legs since it's going on a picotope but I wanted to have the ability to have the legs adjustable. The light will basically "last forever" but choice of tanks may change and I wanted it to be flexible. I went with 3/8" acrylic rod and bent it into shape. I haven't finished the bracket that the legs attach to for it to sit on the rim of the tank yet.. can only do so much in a day...lol Another pic.... love the spring clamps holding the legs...lol There is a small set screw accessible from the front and back sides at each corner where the legs enter to housing. Legs slide in and out and the set screw locks them in place. Alrighty then... lets fire it up! Few more pics showing power jack, set screw (not there yet) for locking the legs and of course the tape measure for size reference. That's it for now... have to finish up the feet for the legs yet and then start getting the tank set up. Pics when I'm there! Steve Link to comment
sephly Posted April 5, 2011 Share Posted April 5, 2011 WOW thats a GREAT looking light. Link to comment
supernip Posted April 5, 2011 Share Posted April 5, 2011 it looks like a morbidly whimsicle spider from my childhood nightmares Link to comment
sogreedy23 Posted April 5, 2011 Share Posted April 5, 2011 hey man where's mine?! looks really nice as always Steve, very nice work. look forward so seeing this build. Link to comment
glazer Posted April 5, 2011 Author Share Posted April 5, 2011 Thanks guys! it looks like a morbidly whimsicle spider from my childhood nightmares Uh yeah 'nip, you don't think the dimmer knob placements was an accident do you? It's part of my new product line... the Aragog series of lighting. Steve Link to comment
sogreedy23 Posted April 5, 2011 Share Posted April 5, 2011 Thanks guys! Uh yeah 'nip, you don't think the dimmer knob placements was an accident do you? It's part of my new product line... the Aragog series of lighting. Steve Lmao I can definitely dig it Link to comment
malibukay Posted April 5, 2011 Share Posted April 5, 2011 ahhh so nice, im jealous wish i had even the slightest bit of skill to solder =/ thats where im stuck on my build... Link to comment
glazer Posted May 31, 2011 Author Share Posted May 31, 2011 Alright... I finished up the pico light, the legs are all done BUT... due to some placement disagreement with the spouse as to where this little guy is going it's not set up yet. I'll show you the finished product after we, read, she decides where it's going to live. Sooooooo, I thought I'd throw this light into the thread but you get to see this one all finished up!...lol A friend of mine wanted to build a refugium light as well as light up his nano and decided he was going to go with the "economy" leds... Satistronics direct from good ol' Hong Kong. I was past due for a replacement on my halide for my 20 gallon so thought why not. If they don't work out for the long haul I've only got fifty bucks tied up in emitters... all the guts are there so I can change them out down the road if needed. Anyway... here it is. 15 white... info on them is they are 6500K and 15 of the royal blues (450-455nm). They're 3watt emitters with a 700mA max current rating and some reasonably impressive specs as far as output. Hey, I'm just reading their spec sheets... like I know if any of it's true, lol Ordered a 6 x 16 heatsink from heatsinkusa and stuck them on with the thermal tape... first time with that stuff, pretty convenient! Tinned all the stars, stuck them on and started the wiring.... 3 rows of ten... uh, obviously. Close up for all the soldering geeks...lol I picked up a couple of the Inventronics dimmable drivers via Bill at reefledlights.com. On to the housing.. I wanted it as low profile as possible. Since this is going on a 24" wide tank that left me enough room to move the drivers to one side of the heatsink and the fans on the other side. Box is just a hair over 2" in thickness. Glueing it all up.... Time to start putting all the guts in it... Pots and switches installed.. Drivers mounted and wiring getting all cleaned up.... Guts all finished up... I used two SilenX fans for cooling. They are blowing out, air is being sucked into the fixture from the vent above the drivers. All put together and fired up... first pic is the leds at about 10% just so they would show in a pic. Second picture is with them cranked up all the way... seriously bright. All my shop lights are on so it was like daylight in there but the light freaked out the camera and I noticed later that it looks like the shop is in a blackout...lol And on the tank it goes! My 20 is acrylic and since it has a "top" to it I just used stick on bumpers on the bottom corners of the light to sit it in place. I've got the whites running at a little less than half power and the blues at a bit more than that. To my eyes it puts it at about the same intensity of the 150 halide that was on the tank. If I crank the leds up all the way I would expect my corals to basically melt... going to keep an eye on it for a few days to figure out how I need to adjust it. Totally digging the effect and colors... found out how difficult it is to get an accurate picture with the leds. The few I took look absolutely nothing like it does in person... have to play with the settings some more. So that's it... hope you enjoy, gives you some ideas or whatever. Steve Link to comment
Philip271 Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 WOW, that is SWEET! Beautiful work Steve! Link to comment
glazer Posted May 31, 2011 Author Share Posted May 31, 2011 Thanks guys! I'm still trying to get a handle on how intense this lighting is... I ended up dialing it back a little bit more today. Some of my lower light lovers just didn't have a happy look to them. Dialed back the lights, I dunno, another 15 to 20%? Everything perked back up within a couple of hours. If everything is happy after a day or two I'll start bumping it back up a bit over the next week or so.... Steve Link to comment
WillWork4Frags Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 Wow. These builds blew my mind. Top knotch quality! Good job! Link to comment
karisma Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 Im almost done making my pico led lamp which is strikingly simalar to yours except I used an aluminum project box for my housing and used thermal paste on some heatsinks on the inside to transfer heat directly through the aluminum fixture to the sink. (im Hoping it works good) lol. The thing I'm stuck on is the legs. I like your acrylic rod design. How did you bend it an attach it? And where do you get acrylic rod from??? Link to comment
glazer Posted June 1, 2011 Author Share Posted June 1, 2011 I have a plastics distributor at the end of my block so I just walked down to the end of the block and bought the rod You should be able to pick some up at any of the online vendors like Tap or if you have a plastic place in or around town. As far as attaching them... well they're not really attached. If you look at the pic you see the sides of the box are 1/2" acrylic. Holes are drilled in that for the legs to fit in and then they get locked in place by set screws. Bending it is nothing more than warming it with a heat gun till it softens up.. made a little jig out of plywood for the right angle. Takes a couple minutes to warm it and a couple more for it to cool back down enough to hold the shape. Not seeing your project box I'm guessing it's some pretty thin material. If you wanted to try the same thing with the rod maybe you could epoxy a small block of wood to the inside of the box and drill through that and the sides of the box? Steve Link to comment
Neya Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 You are gud. +1 I wish I knew how to work with acrylic like that. Amazing. Link to comment
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