LED Build

[kole18]

very nice.

[JetJumper]

Its been slow for the past bit... but I think I have the design I want.

What do you think?  It has independant Power for blue / white.  Dimmer dials into the wood.  I like it, what do you think?

[Cheebs]

I can dig it, it's looking nice and slick!!

[Vallely4]

looks like your a pro with the power tools .....very sleek

[salvini55]

two thumbs up

[SeaKing]

Its looking good. I would be interested to find out how hot it will get inside the case.  Heat is a failure accelerator for any electronics and you may want to ensure your LED driver modules are somewhat isolated from the air space where the heatsink dumps the heat from the LEDs. You may want to experiment with some kind of air ducting .

On another note, i find the ECOTech cooling design very interesting in that it sucks the air from under the LED module into the cooling cavity and out the top sides. I think this would help keep the ambiant air temperature right above the tank cooler.

[JetJumper]

Heat will not be an issue with this design.  There is a large fan that will keep the heatsink cool.  I have kept the fixture on for 30 minutes with out the fan running an its warm, but not too warm that you can't keep your hands on it.  This is with NO airflow at all.  I see no issues in this design.  I will do something special for you in this case to prove my point.  Stay tuned

As for the Ecotech design, I don't personally agree with having the fan on the water side.  I am predicting they will see lots of failures due to this and salt water entering that part of the unit and causing salt creep inside.  The fan will litterally suck in water / salt and build up inside the fixture.  Just my opinion, but I think its a pretty valid one.  My current light fixture is 6" off the tank and I have to clean salt creep off the T5 reflectors every so often and there is nothing "Pulling" the water to the light fixture.

[SeaKing]

Very good point on the potential salt and water ingestion problem of the ecotech.

[JetJumper]

Here we go, finally got 1/6 put together!  Have to find the knob's for the Pot's but this is the finished product.  May add Acrylic shields to the bottom, but for now.. I want to get the remaining 5 to this stage.

[JetJumper]

Time for some testing.  I will let you know how warm it actually gets.. With the fan running and with out at 100%.

[Greatwhite]

Very cool device... Will also be handy if you go ghost hunting, or if we're ever invaded by Predators.

[JetJumper]

Very cool device... Will also be handy if you go ghost hunting, or if we're ever invaded by Predators.

HAHA! 


I would rather one of these.. but I don'thave that kinda money!

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Infrared-Thermal-Imaging-Camera-BETTER-Flir-Fluke-/180485236683?pt=BI_Cellular_Optical_Television_Test_Equipment&hash=item2a05c227cb

[JetJumper]

Where did we last leave off?  Hmm.. well, I finished the one fixture 100%.  Found the knobs for the Pot's so they are installed and honestly, I like how the fixture turned out.  Now I just need to finish 5 more (Boxes are made, just need to finish them up.)  Slowly making it to the finish line!

[JetJumper]

After the fixture was running for 4 hours I took the Thermal Gun to it and it came up at 26.5C.  That's pretty good considering ambient air in that room is 24C.  I measured the maxspect fixture that I have sitting next to it and it registers at 36C so a significant difference.  The difference with the maxspect however is that it has 2 30watt LED's which generate a lot of heat.  The maxspect has 160watts of LED on the one heatsink where as my fixture has 90watts so I can understand the difference in temps.

After taking a look at how the spread is over the tank, I think I might only go with 4 fixtures instead of 6.  I don't know if anyone would be interested in the other 2?  They will look like the pictures above.  Nicely finished and plug and play.  Finishing them up in the next day or two.  PM me if interested.  I will list them in the classifieds at a later date once finished.

[Hookup]

Jet,
  how about painting those boxes out black or some non-wood color...    

  The build looks very clean, which im sure translates to lots of hours on your end, but to me the wood stands out a bit too much as "why is there wood?"...   a slapping of black high-gloss paint, or other would improve things to my visual eye...

  Glad to hear they are working as advertised...

  Too bad we don't have a club spectrometer and a club PAR meter to use... i'd like to know those details on your setup...   well on a lot of setups actually...   just I haven't found any spectrometers that are even highly-unreasonably priced... most of them are crazy-drunken-stupid priced...

[JetJumper]

  Too bad we don't have a club spectrometer and a club PAR meter to use... i'd like to know those details on your setup...   well on a lot of setups actually...   just I haven't found any spectrometers that are even highly-unreasonably priced... most of them are crazy-drunken-stupid priced...

I hear yeah.  I would love to have access to either of those devices.  But.. not in the price range for me right now.  Almost finished them all then will get some pictures up of the completed light fixture.

As for black, I kinda liked the wood feel.  If you want one custom built for you I will gladly do it in black

[az]

your finish looks very good def got some skills with wood.

[Greatwhite]

Nice thing about building like this is that you could make the fixtures any shape you want - if you have the time and energy, that is.  I love the idea of a custom fixture... Get yourself some sheet metal to clad it in steel for a a modern look, or to turn the whole thing into a little UFO with small blinking LEDs around the outside...

Very cool, and professional looking, even.

[Cheebs]

This fixture is awesome!

I agree Greatwhite, I'd love to see a see-through acrylic fixture where you could see the stuff inside.... Maybe not too practical and you'd get some light bleeding but... hey it would be cool! I think?

[JetJumper]

This fixture is awesome!

I agree Greatwhite, I'd love to see a see-through acrylic fixture where you could see the stuff inside.... Maybe not too practical and you'd get some light bleeding but... hey it would be cool! I think?

I contemplated this idea.  You would not get light bleed because you are still mounting the LED's on a Metal heatsink which unless this is star trek and we have transparent aluminum we aren't going to see that any time soon.

Who knows, maybe I will try my hand at something else soon.  We shall see!