Building a new LED fixture

Capt_krill

Capt_krill

Membership Expired
Well,

This being my second post, 1st post being about a Neo 90 for sale. I figured I might as well chime in here about my tank.

Ive been in the salt aquarium hobby for about a year and half now. Have a 29G tank with a custom Frankenstein LED fixture currently. 24x 3w LEDs, 12 cool white, 12 royal blue. All of this thrown into a throwaway MH fixture that I gutted and

I have got half an inch of growth on a 7in dia. green monti cup and every branch on my tri color valida has new growth going all within a month. 5G water change weekly, Tropic Marin salt, 4 stage spectrapure RO/DI unit.

But since I am going to be getting a Neo 90, my current fixture would not be enough. So its time to upgrade.

I am having Catalina Aquariums, custom build me a 36x12x6 aluminum housing with metal feet, plastic end caps and 2x 4 in fans. $195
Having Nanotuners build a heatsink 30x10x1 with 3/16 fins and a 120mm fan mounted, pre drilled for 48 LEDs, comes with hardware. $135
2x Meanwell ELN 60-48D drivers $64
8x Royal Blue Cree $43
4x Cool Blue Cree $23
12x Neutral White Cree $71
4x True Violet (still working on finding a 500mA 9v PSU for these)

Since me using my LED instead of a crap JBJ 70 MH I have noticed a drop in electricity by about 40 a month. No other changes, that I was aware of occured in this time. I have also gotten significantly better growth than with the MH.

Parts should be arriving within the next week after they are finished being milled.

Thanks for reading

-Tony
 
Very cool, sounds like you'll have a nice LED unit once complete. Be sure to update us as things progress. There are several of us, myself included, that are venturing into LED's and we all appreciate others sharing in their experience with them as the technology advances.
 
Here are some pics with and without LEDs. Warning crappy iPhone pics. Dropped my last camera in my TSN tank filming them. [smilie=angry.gif]

Before
BeforeLEDs.jpg
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Pay no attention to the absence of corals.

After
AfterLEDs-1.jpg
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Pay no attention to the mass amount of micro bubbles. I just put my Reef Octopus 6" NWB on that afternoon.
 
It will look something like this,

I am going to have it powder coated black however instead of the matte metal look.

HDMR.jpg
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This is a picture of a 16x12x6 hood, mind you mine is going to be 20" longer.

You from canton huh?

I'm roughly 30 minutes away from you in Flint. Hate going through Canton Trade Days on my way to Dallas for fish store hopping. Seriously people? Just walk out in the middle of the road when there is a cross-walk 50 feet down the road. Makes me wanna just white smoke my tires to get them to GTFO.

BTW does anyone have any live or dry rock for sale? Starting to cure some left over rock that I pulled out to add more swimming space. And I need about 30-40 more pounds of rock, I am looking for a good shelf rock though, something to place all my SPS on, or at least somewhat.
 
looks nice - yep, live in canton - drop me a line next time you are passing through. where did you order the fixture from?
 
Well, got the fixture on order and paid for. Just the waiting game for them to finish milling it and ship it to me.
 
nice following along with this one. I plan on putting together a fixture from rapid led at some point. I love these sorts of projects.
 
looking forward to the build

I just finished making a couple LED light bars for my 110

couple questions

how are you going to wire them to the meanwells? for example the 12 neutral whites on one and the other 8 RB with the 4 cool blues on the other? if your mixing are the LED's all the same voltage rating?

which brings up the next question: what LED's are you using? XR'-E's
 
I have all the LEDs wired to 2 multi-voltage PSU currently set to 9v. Which, with the meanwells, and the amount of LEDs i have running in series, NOT PARALLEL pushes roughly 900-950mA, which is plenty for the LEDs. I have them connected with terminal strips and crimp connectors and shrink wrap for any wires i spliced together.

I have 20 XP-G Royal Blues, 12 XP-G Cool White, 4 XR-E Cool Blue, and 12 XR-E Neutral Whites.

Once i get everything here, LEDs, heatsink, housing, etc. I will take step by step photos of how i wired them together.
 
Well go my fixture in today.

All packed up, great packing and craftsman ship done by Catalina BTW.
Packed.jpg
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Here are the ends with fans mounted.
Fans.jpg
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Here is the housing completely put together.
Completed.jpg
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Can in 3 pieces for the housing itself. Top and two sides. locking groves. All I can say, in the words of Gabrielle Iglesias, D-A-M-N.
 
Been a while since the update, but here is the update for now.

Heatsink is done being milled.

Some drafted pics of it, will post actual pics of it tomorrow or the following.

Side View
Side.jpg
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Top View
Top.jpg
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Bottom View
Bottom.jpg
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The top has holes for mounting two 120mm Fans on it, as well as the mounting holes to mount it in the fixture.

I will be receiving my LEDs from nanotuners.com and will have a system ready to be built over the weekend hopefully.

So, the following is the completed project items list

Heatsink (by Chris at nanotuners)
20x Royal Blue Cree
12x Neutral White Cree
12x Cool White Cree
4x Cool Blue Cree
Fixture (by Catalina Aquariums)
4x Meanwell 60-48D

Should have everything, if shipping issues do not arise, and completed by next week.
 
Glad Nick talked you out of predrilling all the LED holes! If you want to really snazz it up, Tanners Electronics in Carrollton sells the parts to make custom RCA jacks. I took the ends of my wiring that had to go from the dimmers and the LED's down to the Meanwells in my stand, installed RCA females on the top of the fixture and the bottom of the stand, and then just used RCA cables to make the connection between the two. Now, when I have to remove the fixture, I just unplug the RCA's, and plug them back in. I was also able to color code them, so that I knew which cables were the dimmer, the fans, and the LEDs.
 
The way i have it done now is via terminal strips to connect the wires, the meanwells are mounted inside the fixture and everything is wired via wire splicing and crimps.

Personally i dont like the predrilled look.

I am using my variable voltage psu to supply my dimming function. But this time around I am considering doing pots linked to a certain color. (2 pots total, 1 for the blues (RB and CB) and 1 for the whites (CW and NW). But i do like the quick dis/connect though. Do you have any pictures available?
 
Here are a couple before installation: I'll get a couple more of how it looks now later this evening:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5310264/LED%20pics/fish%20286.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5310264/LED%20pics/fish%20287.JPG
 
Crazy, the edit button doesnt exist for me anymore.

Here are a couple more pics:

This one shows one of the cables coming from the meanwell to the back of my female rca panel
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5310264/LED%20pics/Capture.JPG

This one shows the RCA panel and some of the other rca connections I have going on.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5310264/LED%20pics/rca.JPG
 
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