reefpirate Posted January 2, 2004 Author Share Posted January 2, 2004 More pics... Wanted to see how these things looked with water in the tank. Here is the Moon Glow - Dimmed to lowest setting in a completely dark room. Illumination is by 4 luxeons 1wt white stars- dimmed. Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 2, 2004 Author Share Posted January 2, 2004 And now at 100% - you should be able to get a pretty good idea of the light that only 4 luxeons is capable of throwing.... the shimmer is fantastic... like micro metal halides. Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 2, 2004 Author Share Posted January 2, 2004 One more for now... I'll post more on the light hood when the other 8 bulbs show up along with the heat sink... this photo illustrates 4 luxeons lighting up a 2.5g tank - this time the room is also illuminated with two 100wt incandescents... again.. this should leave a great impression of the color temp of the bulbs. This is about as close as I can get the camera to rendering the scene... I think the digital photo turned out with a bit more green/yellow then real life... should give you an idea of the intensity and relative color to the soft white incandescents in the house.... -Bill Link to comment
palaegic Posted January 2, 2004 Share Posted January 2, 2004 Great thread Pirate. Keep it coming. How is heat with the 4 LED's at full? Are you using a temp gun? I guess that little plastic canopy makes me a bit nervous. Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 2, 2004 Author Share Posted January 2, 2004 Originally posted by palaegic How is heat with the 4 LED's at full? Are you using a temp gun? I guess that little plastic canopy makes me a bit nervous. Using a heat gun after a good 5min of run time I measured 128deg on the emitter surface... I pulled the plug at this point as the LED's are not coupled to a heat sink... worried about thermal damage to the stars I pulled the plug until I can mount them to the heat sink... The back-side of the units is made of aluminium... it felt about as warm as the front but the gun wouldn't take a reading off of the surface... heat is far less then that of a 13wt compact flour. light. Link to comment
drdrew Posted January 2, 2004 Share Posted January 2, 2004 great thread....want to see the 12 LED set up! Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 2, 2004 Author Share Posted January 2, 2004 Me too - the other 8 led's for the array should be in the first of next week. Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 4, 2004 Author Share Posted January 4, 2004 I did a bit more research on the Luxeons befor really letting them crank without a heat sink. According to Lumileds the luxeons that are pre-mounted to the aluminum PCB may be run without a heatsink. Thus, I let the unit run for 15min in a 70deg room and measured the temp at the base of the LED. The highest temp I could sense with the temp gun was 142deg then I placed the unit on a 2"x2"x.25" CPU type heat sink and let it run for another 15 min - this dropped the temp down to 136deg... note the unit was not mechanically connected to the heat sink... just resting atop it. Next I placed the unit on a 2"x4" heat sink with 1" fins... temp dropped down to 120deg... Why is all this important? The light ouput decreases and shifts with temp increase... According to the lumileds spec sheet the best bet would be to run the Luxeons as cool as possible... I think that mounting the luxeons to a small heatsink then forcing cooling air through the hood across the heat sink is going to be required to get the best overall performance from the light system. One really neat thing is the light throws very little heat forward placing a piece of paper over the luxeons and running the unit for 15min only increased the temp of the paper by 5deg over ambient.... this means that the tank isn't going to get a huge dose of IR like my 250 MH throws. -Bill Originally posted by palaegic Great thread Pirate. Keep it coming. How is heat with the 4 LED's at full? Are you using a temp gun? I guess that little plastic canopy makes me a bit nervous. Link to comment
Pickles Posted January 7, 2004 Share Posted January 7, 2004 Hows it going Reefpirate? This thread is extreamly interesting, I didn't think you would get that sort of out put from Led lights!! Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 7, 2004 Author Share Posted January 7, 2004 Basically I am waiting on a few more components to arrive. I began work on the heatsink / fan unit for the Luxeon III 3wt Leds that I will be trying... and I have sent the reflector back/plate off to be machined from Aluminum - this will act as a suitable heat sink for the Luxeon 1wt LED's. More to come on the 1wt LED's as soon as the Aluminium reflector comes back. -Bill Link to comment
Reefer_Buddha Posted January 7, 2004 Share Posted January 7, 2004 what do you predict the lumens rating to be when youre finished? Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 7, 2004 Author Share Posted January 7, 2004 Each 1wt star is rated at 25lm at 350ma Each 3wt star is rated at 65lm at 700ma (luxeon III) Each 3wt star is rated at 80lm at 1000ma (luxeon III) Each 5wt star is rated at 120lm at 700ma Presently I am playing with a fixture using 12 1wt stars (300lm) and another using 8-12 3wt stars at 700ma (520-780). I am not certain the 2.5 mini bow has the optimum size/depth/surface-area for this kind of lighting but that is what I intend to find out. The LED's are very directional and throw 90% of the light oupt forward into the tank unlike HID's and PC's which rely upon a reflector to redirect light down into the tank. Ultimately I wish to take some actual lux readings and compare with various reef aquariums in the area under more conventional light sources. -Bill Link to comment
Von digity Posted January 7, 2004 Share Posted January 7, 2004 Just curious, what is your predicted/estimated cost of this project? Bty, this is a really cool. I had to wipe drool of my chin when I saw that pic of the tank lit up... mmm...crispy... Link to comment
Spencerx Posted January 7, 2004 Share Posted January 7, 2004 very sweet, what do you do for a living (you said something about a cnc and you seem to know what you are doign with electronics )??? Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 8, 2004 Author Share Posted January 8, 2004 a 1wt star cost ~ 10.00/LED that's $120 for the array of 12 + $40 for a suitable driver. Or $160 just for the lighting components. The 3wt star cost ~15/LED or $180 for the array of 12 and $80.00 for a suitable driver or $260 just for the lighting components. This option throws 2.6x the light and costs about 60% more. I am not ready to fund a 5wt star project at the momenent ($45 per LED). Originally posted by Von digity Just curious, what is your predicted/estimated cost of this project? Bty, this is a really cool. I had to wipe drool of my chin when I saw that pic of the tank lit up... mmm...crispy... Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 8, 2004 Author Share Posted January 8, 2004 Thanks Spencerx, by day I am a GIS Analyst by night I run a model airplane mfg. business out of the basement. www.stevensaero.com I run a pair of CO2 lasers for use in the model business. -Bill Originally posted by Spencerx very sweet, what do you do for a living (you said something about a cnc and you seem to know what you are doign with electronics )??? Link to comment
Pickles Posted January 9, 2004 Share Posted January 9, 2004 that laser cutter looks like a nifty tool hehehe wish I had one.. Would you mind telling me where you got it? (I prolly couldn't afford one, but I still wanna look hahaha) thats quiet a bit for led lighting, but I suppose when your going to get lighting of this amount its well worth it! I think you should try it on a bigger tank! Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 9, 2004 Author Share Posted January 9, 2004 Ebay! Where else? more info at www.ulsinc.com -Bill Originally posted by Pickles that laser cutter looks like a nifty tool hehehe wish I had one.. Would you mind telling me where you got it? (I prolly couldn't afford one, but I still wanna look hahaha) thats quiet a bit for led lighting, but I suppose when your going to get lighting of this amount its well worth it! I think you should try it on a bigger tank! Link to comment
Pickles Posted January 11, 2004 Share Posted January 11, 2004 *Whistles* I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it!!!!! hahaha damn it why can't I have it *Checks wallet and looks at tank* OOOOOH thats right!!! still, a cool product that I want! How does it go with etching in metals and woods? Link to comment
cliffrouse11baseball Posted January 11, 2004 Share Posted January 11, 2004 Very neat. You know alot is all I have to say. Well done. Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 14, 2004 Author Share Posted January 14, 2004 Just enough to be dangerous.... Originally posted by cliffrouse11baseball Very neat. You know alot is all I have to say. Well done. Tank 2.5g Mini Bow Dimensions Interior 9.75" L x 5" (average) Wide x 8.5" tall. Surface area = 0.34sq. ' I have wired up my first array to test. Initially I wanted 12 1wt luxeon stars over the tank - I decided I needed a suitable heatsink to maintain the high lumen output of the LED's. I have an aluminum insert being CNC'ed but it may be a while at this point. Off to the surplus electronics supply house. I found a nice heatsink capable of mounting 8 Luxeon stars and have mounted the heatsink to the acrylic reflector along with a small 12v DC cooling fan. My 3wt White luxeons are on back order so the first array I built was composed of the following: Test Array #1 8 x 1wt White Luxeon Stars 2 x 3wt Royal Blue Luxeon Stars The ratio of White to Blue light is just under 1:1 thanks to the extreme output of the 3wt Blues... there is just no way to describe the retinal damage they are capable of - don't stare into the light!! Estimated Total Lumens 330 Estimated Lumens / Sq' = 970 Total Watts 14 Watts / Gallon 5.6 The LED array is presently controlled by 3 separate driver circuts (power pucks from LED supply) that were going to be mounted within the canopy. After 15 min of driving the LED's OUTSIDE OF THE HOOD the Junction temp of the LED's stabilized at only 90 deg f. while the pucks reached 115 deg f. The array throws a tremendous amount of forward light - yet little - no heat is detectible when placing your hand on the LED or in the path of the light. I couldn't fit the 3 water resistant epoxy coated pucks into the limited space of the hood so I may end up using George Scolaro's uFlex driver boards http://www.geocities.com/george_tlc/led.html... Alternatively the entire array may be driven from a single 700mah Xitanium balast from Advance (this seems to be the most practical method of rigging the array). Here is a photo of the components the array was built from: Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 14, 2004 Author Share Posted January 14, 2004 And a shot of the heat sink / cooling fan / reflector arrangement. Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 14, 2004 Author Share Posted January 14, 2004 Here is a shot of the soon to be used Xitanium Ballast! The Xitanium ballast will drive 12 1wt Luxeons from a 120v power source... Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 14, 2004 Author Share Posted January 14, 2004 The 5wt 700mA power puck from LED Supply will drive 4-1wt Luxeons, 2-3wt Luxeons, or 1-5wt Luxeon from a12v power source. Link to comment
reefpirate Posted January 14, 2004 Author Share Posted January 14, 2004 George's driver board for comparison. Configurable as a 1wt or 5wt driver to drive 1-4 1wt luxeons, 2 3wt luxeons, or 1 5wt luxeon. Offers dimming / on-off switch - very cool driver board! Link to comment
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