DIY LED hood and light finally done

[bojko]

First of all, I would like to thank the whole Lightning forum of Nano-Reef for the vast experience and knowledge that is shared from and special thanks to evilc66, who has helped me a lot with his advises in order to get my project done.

 

As introduction to my project, I have ordered 14 Rebel Luxeon LED's from Steves LED's and an Inventronics 40 W driver from ledgroupbuy. On the next list are the LED's I ordered:

 

4 Normal White

6 Royal Blue

2 True Cool Blue

2 Cyan

 

I have put them in 2 clusters, with 2 NW, 3 RB, 1 CB and 1 Cyan each. The heatsink that I mounted the LEDs on I got it from an old audio booster. As you can see on the pictures, it was oily and dirty, but after some cleaning and polishing, it looked like brand new.

 

 

Next thing I did was cut it in half, so I can make the two clusters as planned. As you can see on the picture below, on one if the halves I have placed the lights on a paper, so I can mark where to drill the holes for the screws.

 

 

Here is one of the drilled parts:

 

 

After drilling and again polishing the heatsinks, I started to mount the LEDs on it (with thermal paste between the LED and the heatsink). On the next pictures you can see the both pieces finished, only not soldered.

 

 

 

 

Next step was to solder the LEDs in a serial connection and wire them to the driver:

 

 

 

 

 

After that was done, it was time for testing and voila:

 

 

 

[MeepNand]

That might be too many leds to go without active cooling on that size heatsink. I use a number of heatsinks, and your fin spacing is okay if you have at least 3.5 square inches per watt of led. I don't think you do, so see if you can slap a CPU fan on there.

[bojko]

It was time for LEDs to go in the hood that my friend made for me. I drilled holes for the coolers to fit in and put them between the top of the hood and the heatsinks:

 

 

Here is a view from the bottom side of the hood:

 

 

And the top side (I will put some protection just in case):

 

 

 

 

And at last, some side pic (the thing on the left side is the potentiometer, which I drilled a hole in side of the hood, and then glued on a plastic plate, which was drilled just enough I can fit the handle of the potentiometer):

 

 

Thank you all for your support, and if there are any question, I would be glad to answer.

[MeepNand]

Sorry, didn't see the heatsink fans.

Looks pretty suave. There also seems to be room to upgrade the fixture in the future.

[1reefluvr2]

Great diy what drivers are running the whites?

[ajmckay]

Great diy what drivers are running the whites?

 

He's only got 14 LEDs so he's probably driving all of them off the single inventronics driver.

 

Looks like a nice setup though! Nice job taking lots of pictures.

 

Also. good use of resources. For a different project I was looking for heatsinks all over the place and it's pretty hard to find ones that have a nice, flat bottom and not a lot of holes and stuff. One thing I noticed is that you may have too much thermal grease between the heatsink. I suppose it may depend on what kind you used, but at least from what I know you must use only enough to have a very very thin layer between the heatsink and the LED star.

 

Next, make sure you seal up the hood well. It looks like it's coated with some laminate or plastic, but you will want to paint the inside of the holes you cut for the fans and use some black silicone/caulk to seal up the inside corners. It looks like particleboard or something similar and it will swell and crumble if exposed to much moisture.

 

I'm interested in your color choices too, post pictures with it on your tank sometime.

 

If you're in Russia, did you see/feel/hear the meteor strike?

 

 

[bojko]

Thank you ajmckay. I indeed am running all the LEDs on one Inventronics 40 w driver, since the cost was very great to purchase more (I am from Macedonia and shipping costs a lot).

 

The hood is made from coated plywood, since it is easy to cut and screw on it.

 

About the tank, I am waiting for the silicone from the overflow to dry out, so I can do a leak test in the upcoming days. Be sure I will post pictures of that when the times comes.

 

Thank you all for your support.