CNCreef Asis Pro 824 LED/T5HO Evil Cluster Hybrid

[jedimasterben]

And that's not even at 100%

[CrazyEyes]

That's a sexy fixture man. It really is fixtures like this that make me to be able to not justify spending the money on radions.

[dacdaddy]

Whats the best way to affix the optics? And what size is that makers heatsink? Lookin good!

[jedimasterben]

I attached the optics that didn't already have adhesive (the Minnie, and the Brooke had a holder) with thermal adhesive from Steve's, but you can also use 'natural cure' silicone, basically one that doesn't have the vinegar smell, as the acetic acid could somewhat frost the built-in lens. NEVER use superglue or you will destroy the built-in lens and ruin the LED.

 

I think even regular silicone is mostly ok, evil has used it before and said it works great, but that's what I read on the internet.

 

The Makers I used is the 18" model.

[jedimasterben]

So I totally forgot that the Makers hardware doesn't fit the aluminum extrusion. I'll have to go to Home Depot tomorrow to go and get some washers to be able to use the hardware I have now.

 

Oh, this it turning out to be a lot of work!

[Confuse]

I hope this is a helpful update if anyone is building an Evil Cluster....

 

I finally put optics on all the LEDs.

60's on the HV

90 on CB and Cyan

MINNIE-WWW on RB

Brooke-W on NW array

 

Once I put the optics, especially the Brooke-W, the white was like a spotlight, but as I raised the fixture to about 17-18" above the tank, the light started getting more uniform. I don't see as much disco as I used to when I had the light hanging about 14" above without the Brooke-W reflector on the NW. Now I can see the more crisp white light people refer to, but before, I had a lot of color banding that made the NW look really yellow.

 

I also noticed that without the Brooke-W and no optics on the 3w LEDs, the separation of colors on my wall was really evident. Now it's more of a blue-ish light all throughout.

 

So in turn, I am much much happier with the look of my evil cluster with the larger optics on!

[Sailfish]

The fixture will light up your entire neighborhood! Better put on sun lotion

 

I hope that you will write a summary of your Evil's cluster build, if I am to copy it for my 18" Cube. This thread would be difficult to use as a 123-guide, I think

[jedimasterben]

The fixture will light up your entire neighborhood! Better put on sun lotion

 

I hope that you will write a summary of your Evil's cluster build, if I am to copy it for my 18" Cube. This thread would be difficult to use as a 123-guide, I think

Oh don't worry, this thread has been a cluster#### at times but I'm gonna clean up the first post into something useful

[zemuss]

Yea I am waiting for the edit of the front page lol.

[jedimasterben]

Soon, I promise

 

Things are still pretty hectic down here, work is nuts in addition to not sleeping well at night. Makes me a bit nuts

[zemuss]

You are north of me.. Lol I live in Ft. Lauderdale..

[jedimasterben]

What the frick, guys. I was going to get this thing finished last night, and installed tonight, but that certainly didn't happen. Turns out I can't get a 45 degree angle from these heatsinks, they're too short. When I just figured I'd do it at a different angle, one I could use, I started drilling my holes and absolutely SHATTERED my drill bit. Shit. In addition, I marked my holes wrong, so I had to have my grandpa (with the proper tools) drill it again today. He got it all settled, though. It's good that someone actually knows what they're doing.

 

So, I get the behemoth home and start wiring it up (FINALLY), and after I get four of the LDD wired to the LEDs, I wanted to test them out again, so I pulled out the two 48v power supplies to get them hooked up. I get them plugged in to power, and I bring out the multimeter to put them at 51v instead of 48v so that I can fully power all my strings. Well, the first one goes without a hitch. The second one, however, decided to be a douche. The trim pot broke as soon as my screwdriver touched it, and now it sits at 43.2v, not enough to run any strings except for my blue and cyan ones, the rest are all 44v+. Well, shit again. I guess I'll be ordering another power supply.

 

I wish I could run everything off of one power supply, but even if I run the Bridgelux chips in parallel (which I'm thinking I might have to do, since they're so friggin powerful at even 700mA, on a 1000mA driver... makes me shiver with antici....pation), I'll still be a bit over the current limit of the 7.3A power supply. I guess if I'm running the BL chips in parallel, I could probably run the Luxeon M on 700mA LDD that I have here from my Lumia test rig, that would put me at around 6.5A draw, then I could run all on one. Hmmm, I'll have to test everything out and see where it all gets me. I want my violets to be my primary photosynthetic drive, so they'll be at maximum power, with royal blue making up more PAR, with the white LEDs being for looks, along with the cyan and cool blue to keep it from being purple.

 

 

TEASE IT!

 

[MeepNand]

You can't re-solder the trimpot?

[Horerczy]

Micro pots suck for that exact reason. tiny and fragile little things.

[blasterman]

Currently running a three cluster over one of my 10gal frags with each cluster running the 3500k version of the 950b along with a single Luxeon-M and single Rebel ES 'cool blue'. May seem like overkill on a 10gal, but it's all bare optics, and the light is running low on the 10gal. The heatsink actually rides on top of the cover glass, which is a config I like to keep thngs simple and evap down. Also has very wide coverage and no hotspots. The Luxeon -Ms are running at about ~250mA to get me around 14000k, and the tank is very bright.

 

The 3500ks were from a different project, and combined with the Luxeon-M's are obviously on the purple side. Not sure if I'll swap the 3500ks for cooler ones. Corals don't care. There is no visible disco. Once I get my color combo in place I'm going to elevate the light about 7" over the tank so it's easier to access, but I've decided to use mirrors as reflectors rather than optics. Obviously I'll report back how this works, but it should be seamless.

 

As per my other thread, Rebel ES cool-blues are cyan - period. I found an old Cree cool-blue, swapped it with one of the clusters, and it''s a serious improvement. The only tweak I'm going to make to the light is remove the worthless Rebel ES cool blues and replace them with two Cree cool-blues per cluster. The Luxeon M's are so overpowering I need more cool blue in the mix than anticipated. All my blues run on a single channel for simplicity, and this should get me close to the classic Evil Cluster light balance.

[jedimasterben]

You can't re-solder the trimpot?

Nope, it is in two or three pieces :/

 

Micro pots suck for that exact reason. tiny and fragile little things.

Yep. sigh.

 

Currently running a three cluster over one of my 10gal frags with each cluster running the 3500k version of the 950b along with a single Luxeon-M and single Rebel ES 'cool blue'. May seem like overkill on a 10gal, but it's all bare optics, and the light is running low on the 10gal. The heatsink actually rides on top of the cover glass, which is a config I like to keep thngs simple and evap down. Also has very wide coverage and no hotspots. The Luxeon -Ms are running at about ~250mA to get me around 14000k, and the tank is very bright.

 

The 3500ks were from a different project, and combined with the Luxeon-M's are obviously on the purple side. Not sure if I'll swap the 3500ks for cooler ones. Corals don't care. There is no visible disco. Once I get my color combo in place I'm going to elevate the light about 7" over the tank so it's easier to access, but I've decided to use mirrors as reflectors rather than optics. Obviously I'll report back how this works, but it should be seamless.

 

As per my other thread, Rebel ES cool-blues are cyan - period. I found an old Cree cool-blue, swapped it with one of the clusters, and it''s a serious improvement. The only tweak I'm going to make to the light is remove the worthless Rebel ES cool blues and replace them with two Cree cool-blues per cluster. The Luxeon M's are so overpowering I need more cool blue in the mix than anticipated. All my blues run on a single channel for simplicity, and this should get me close to the classic Evil Cluster light balance.

I read through the 'LED Aesthetics' thread a few times, and it seems like a 4:1 ratio of royal blue to blue was about spot on, and I've been sticking to that and had better results. My array for my tank has 12x RB M and 12x blue Rebels (but like you said, they're more greenish).

[evilc66]

Come on you wussy. Measure the resistance on the trim pot on the working power supply, take out the old trim pot, and replace it with something more robust. Sure, it may be bigger and mounted remotely, but it will get you working faster and cheaper.

[blasterman]

I read through the 'LED Aesthetics' thread a few times, and it seems like a 4:1 ratio of royal blue to blue was about spot on

 

It's subjective obviously, but I'm increasing the ratio for my own use for a few reasons.

 

First, Luxeon M's are still rebels and their color is a bit more violet than typical Cree RBs. Not all, most of the aethestics thread is about Cree RBs, and Rebel royals are a bit different and require more cool-blue to offset.

 

I'm also running more and more SPS, and cool blue is more advantageous with SPS coloration than it is with softies or LPS. Not sure why, but SPS just seems to look better with a higher percentage of cool-blue.

[jedimasterben]

Just blew up an LDD. Mixed up the + and - from the power supply. Whoops!

 

 

 

 

I have to wonder - they're so small, but they produce so much smoke when they blow, where is it all stored??

 

 

This is what the NW + RB + CB looks like on the ceiling:

 

 

 

 

The CB are definitely very cyan compared to the RB when looking at the LEDs, but looking at what they're shining on, it's pretty blue with a slight green twinge. The RB M is friggin sexy.

 

Looks like I'm hitting about 600 PAR evenly across a 48" x 24" area at 30" from the LEDs, not including the violet. For some reason, I'm getting dick for PAR from them now. At 28", uncorrected it's about 90, so corrected is around 126 PAR, a lot less than the 233 I was getting. They're on separate 700mA LDD. My original test was on a Meanwell LPC-35-700, so same current. And I'm using the same measuring tape, too

 

 

Meh, still, 125ish PAR just in violet at that distance is friggin killer.

[farkwar]

I have to wonder - they're so small, but they produce so much smoke when they blow, where is it all stored??

 

 

More proof of the Smoke Theory.

[Horerczy]

Just blew up an LDD. Mixed up the + and - from the power supply. Whoops!

I have to wonder - they're so small, but they produce so much smoke when they blow, where is it all stored??

Well the magic blue smoke tends to be packed in via more magic so black box drivers like that are potentially chests of holding for an infinite amount of blue smoke.

 

At least it's small. We had a server bank at work light up earlier this year because nobody changed the fan filters. A processor released it's magic blue smoke and it took everything else with it. Lost the whole thing.

[jedimasterben]

Oh crap, that would be awful! Bet that cost a looooottta pretty pennies.

 

 

 

So I just realized that the LDD boards fit absolutely perfectly into a set of slots at the top of the Makers heatsink.... After wiring everything to have the LDD be away from the LEDs, I think I'm going to mount them up top.

 

 

This thing is so ridiculously powerful that I decided NOT to use their max current. The four Bridgleux will be run in two parallel strings on a 1000mA LDD, so 500mA each, still around 1000 lumens apiece. Everything else will be run at 700mA maximum, and I'll probably have to really dim down the Luxeon M to not fry things. 600+ PAR at 28" isn't anything to play around with

[Horerczy]

Oh crap, that would be awful! Bet that cost a looooottta pretty pennies.

Numbers weren't released but the part was in no way cheap considering the dent it put in our bonus. Sad it was all caused by not replacing some inexpensive foam air filters.

[jedimasterben]

Kinda like in the school district with the classroom projectors. When they were ordered, it was said that the custodians are the ones who need to clean the two filters on each unit every two weeks. If they aren't cleaned, the pieces of shit overheat, blowing the bulbs in them (which are $200 apiece) and warping the lens so the image starts to run away after a while of use. Well, only at two of ten schools do the custodians actually clean the filters. Only two of ten schools have very few problems with their projectors. When projectors started crapping out this year (after their two year warranty, of course), the schools are saying that IT needs to buy new projectors since we (the IT people) haven't been cleaning the filters... but we basically get to tell the schools to suck it, as it isn't our job and it never has been.

[121a]

First off, wow, this thread is immensly packed with information and very cool stuff!!! Definately caught my attention over the last week because I am looking at convering my 150G to LEDs. Currently have 3x250w MHs. Now, I am trying to figure out a price for the "evil cluster" that I would like to design but I can't seem to figure out how many Luxeon Ms and 1350Bs I will need.

 

Tank is 72x18x29. I would like to use 3 x 12" Makers heatsinks. Now the question is can i get away with 1x1350B and 4xLuxeon Ms per heatsink (with either 4xOCW or a mix of other 3w LEDs)?

 

Or should I bump it to 2x1350B and 8xMs per 12" heatsink?

 

Stocking is Softy and LPS, so nothing extremely light demanding. I am under the impression that my first option would be adequate but I figured I would ask the experts!!!

 

Thanks