LED USERS TAKE NOTE 17 dollar 50W LED DRIVER

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British_Hempire

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Hello folks

I know a lot of people are interested in LED growlights. Quite frankly, the manufacturers are ripping us off with grossly inflated prices, such as 600 dollars for the 90W UFO, you could build a much better light for 200 dollars.

The problem is always drivers, they are expensive, but I have found a wonderful cheap unit for just under 17 dollars with shipping, they are 47.5W, the output is a whopping 68V at 700mA so it's perfect for driving 3W emitters.

http://www.bestofferbuy.com/700ma-40v68v-constant-current-led-driver-110v240v-ac-input-p-7626.html

I've bought three of them and built a 150W LED array using CREE LEDs, and you can pick up 3W LEDs from as little as 3 dollars now, so don't waste thousands of dollars of UFOs, procyons etc, get the soldering iron out. I'll be posting details of my light shortly. I'm gonna be running my 150W LED array in the 2x2 tent I won, I am hoping I can get a decent result this time.

These Luxeon K2 warm white LED stars are excellent for growing, having plenty of red in their output spectrum but with a blue spike that corresponds exactly with the response spike in that region. Only 3 dollars:



Luxeon 3W red bare emitters are only just over 2 dollars:



Same supplier does the cheapest 3W UV emitter too but it's 8 dollars:



So grab yourself three 50W drivers, 75 red LEDs and 25 warm white LEDs and build yourself a kickass UFO killer for 300 bucks, for heatsinks, be creative, find somethign aluminium.

For sticking it all together this thermal glue for 8 bucks is awesome:



150W for 300 bucks sounds a lot better than a 90W UFO for over 600. 2 dollars per watt is as cheap as you are gonna get for LED grow lighting currently, trust me, I've done countless hours of research into the LED market.
 
Z

Zoolander

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Man I'd love to learn how to make one so I can have one in Blue but I'm not so great at DIY things:sad0071:
 
H

highroller

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Excellent thread BH. Way to do the research for us. Thank you. I'm gonna go dig through the links you posted. Mebbe build myself a couple. :cool0041:
 
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British_Hempire

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I'll do a detailed DIY tutorial shortly when I've finished my new light. I'm just putting the finishing touches to it at the moment.
 
B

British_Hempire

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I'm putting the finishing touches to me new LED light then I'll borrow a cam and take some pics. I've got three 700mA 68V drivers (50W each), each running 14 red CREE XR-C stars, 4 CREE XR-E cool white P4s, 2 red Luxeon K2 warm white stars and 5 Prolight UV stars. The middle bank of the three has 5 CREE XR-E R2s instead of the Prolight UVs.

I have in total:

42 x CREE XR-C red
12 x CREE XR-E p4 cool white
6x Luxeon K2 warm white
5 x CREE XR-E R2 cool white
10 x Prolight UV

That's a total of 75 LEDs mounted to an array 240mm x 240mm made by joining together 9 Akasa AK-860 Pentium4 heatsinks. I'll be using this LED array in a 600mm x 600mm tent. I'm hoping this will be sufficient photonic energy to produce a meaningful result. My previous LED experiment used 3w Luxeons running at 1400mA and LEDengin 660nm 5W running at 1000mA. I think the LEDengins are crap, the max vf of the 5 I have on my old array is 2.5V so they are only 2.5W devices, not the 5W claimed, and the stars they are mounted on are crap, very very difficult to get a good solder joint on them, never had this problem with any other star LEDs. I decided not to bother with edison or LEDengin 660nm LEDs for my new array as they are expensive and low output compared to other reds commonly available.

These CREE LEDs are a world away from the cheap crappy plastic 5mm LEDs we see everywhere these days, I'm hoping by using a shitload of them I can make some progress towards pulling off a decent harvest with LEDs.

IMG_1961.jpg
 
B

British_Hempire

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It's difficult to find big heatsinks for mounting all your LEDs on. Luckily I found a place selling large aluminium CPU heatsinks for 99p each in a clearance sale and bought a load of them.

However, I have found these 'big bastard' heatsinks measuring no less than 6.5 x 9.5 inches and an inch think (165x240x25mm) and these should be ample for cooling a couple of hundred watts of LEDs, especially if you mount a fan on it. I've bought two as they are only 8 quid and heatsinks this big don't come along very often at this price.



I also found an amazingly cheap price for white 1w Luxeons, the guy is selling them 16 for a tenner, which is a fifth of the retail price. I picked up 32 of them, yes, I'm gonna build some more LED lights and see just how many watts of these little buggers you need to grow a good bud:
 
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thc4sim

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LOL! Hempy have you been up all night soldering again!!!

your new light sounds interesting, be good to see what results you get...
 
B

British_Hempire

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Yes mate, it reeks of flux and hash round ere! lol
 
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Swiffy80

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Hey BH... Do you sleep mate!? Thanks for the info cant wait to see your light...ive been watching Maces thread and he seams to have done good..however maybe the yeild wasnt as high as he hope.. ive seen 'user1's light and i must say its simple and very immpressive.. most importantly it does wat its built to do.
I will deffantly be making one very soon i nearly brought the driver you linked! Suppose im just waiting for the online tutorial!
 
C

Crackerass

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very interesting i look forward to the DIY. would we have to do anything different to it since living in america i know yall dont run 120....
 
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British_Hempire

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The only difference is the driver, you need to get a 110V driver.
 
Green81

Green81

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Nice 1 Hempire cant wait to see another one of yours grows with these LEds,, what do you think you gonna grow?? More indica dominant this time??
 
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British_Hempire

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It will be a mixture - Chemo, Trainwreck, Colombian Gold x Nolalu Gold, Fruitbowl, El Yucateca, Elevator Man's 6 week inbred Flo.
 
K

kid606

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wow, very interesting..
thanks for being a pioneer and don't forget to sleep :passingjoint:
 
H

highroller

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BH, with regards to the heatsinks, are they anything special? aluminum and copper both absorb and shed heat very well. What is the general design of these? could they easily be fabricated by an experienced fabricator. I have access to all kinds of metals, a machine shop, welding and brazing. I could fab them to any specs I'll bet. Guess that would go for anything else needed too, like the frame, reflector etc.
 
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British_Hempire

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All you need is a big honking block of aluminium or copper. Then you would need a CNC machine to cut it to create fins, the greater surface area, the better the cooling. So if you can find a nice lump of scrap metal and have access to a CNC machine, go for it.

The other method would be to sandcast a heatsink, if you have a smelter and some scrap aluminium, it could be an interesting option, you could really go to town with designing a custom design if you were to cast it yourself. Old cooking pots are a good source of scrap aluminium, or some old pieces of aircraft if there is a scrapyard nearby with any bits of old 'plane.

Bear in mind that refrigerators, microwave ovens and hifi equipment all contain large heatsinks, so probably the best place to find a big honking aluminium heatsink is in the local scrap pile.

This is a heatsink, it's just a finned block of aluminium, they are made by extrusion usually, although you do see some that have been machined from a sold block, usually the more complex designs.

DSCF6350-copy-big.jpg


One thing I would love to see someone do is a DIY watercooled LED array. This is much simpler and cheaper than it sounds. Just use one of the many PC watercooling kits, this means you can use much smaller heatsinks as the water cooling block is doing the work of drawing away the heat
 
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rised_saints

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just wundering why wouldnt you just use a 600Watt driver to power 288 2 watt led with a transformer to save about 40% of the energy just like stealth grow did it


there just 46$ for 600watt only thing i have no idea how to wirer them but it dont seem that conplicated i thingk it would go from wall to transformer to 600watt driver them i dont know then your leds transistor and ground if you can can help me on this please due because i am searching all over to try to figure this out
 
S

Spuzzum

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just wundering why wouldnt you just use a 600Watt driver to power 288 2 watt led with a transformer to save about 40% of the energy just like stealth grow did it


there just 46$ for 600watt only thing i have no idea how to wirer them but it dont seem that conplicated i thingk it would go from wall to transformer to 600watt driver them i dont know then your leds transistor and ground if you can can help me on this please due because i am searching all over to try to figure this out

http://www.instructables.com/id/Converting-a-computer-ATX-power-supply-to-a-really/
http://web2.murraystate.edu/andy.batts/ps/powersupply.htm
http://www.instructables.com/id/Convert-an-ATX-Power-Supply-Into-a-Regular-DC-Powe/
http://www.mbeckler.org/powersupply/
http://www.antennex.com/preview/archive3/powers.htm


Those should give you some ideas...

I'm currently brainstorming my own panel, and quickly found I needed to abandon my want for led's in "parallel".. easier on the amperage if in "series". My 127 x1w cree panel looks like led's will use 125.26w, while total consumption is 181.8w. That's at the "typical vf" from the specs sheets, and an "online series resistor calculator". If I drop the inputs by 0.3v's or so, which will ensure longer life of the panel.. it comes to 112.3w used by leds, and 180w total consumption. That's with a 12v source. So.. thinking of using the +12v rails from an old psu supply. :)



cheers...........
 
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