Led Build

[StandbySetting]

Just awaiting the arrival of thermal tape and the PSU now, the heat sinks have been fixed into place, and the unit is beginning to come together:

I need to cut the wood to size and then cross brace it and build a box for it to sit in, I think I'll seal the unit with a sheet of acrylic then, the top will have open flap access for any future repairs that need to be done, but the idea is that the LED's and circuit will sit on the long pieces of wood and once together this piece just sits in the box and is screwed into place, then it can just be unscrewed if I need to repair it.

 

[Tizer]

Could have used an aluminium sheet cut to size, would act like an addiitonal heatsink for all the lights, as well as a refelector. Not sure i like the idea of a heat sink attached to something as flamable as wood

 

[StandbySetting]

I have spoken to SuperColey1 about that, they don't get hot enough to damage the wood, but I have raised them away from the wood with washers.

 

[StandbySetting]

The self adhesive thermal pads arrived this morning, so I decided to fit the main part of the unit together:

I just need to do a bit of cable tidying now with some tacks.

 

[Tizer]

Ah good, i've only experienced the heatsinks in my PC they get furrin hot when the fans pack in!

Looks to be coming along nicely.

 

[StandbySetting]

Wiring done for the turn on, had to a bit of fault finding after I had a faulty LED:

 

[Plecc]

Looking very nice bud.

Are you going to bother with a fan to vent the enclosure?
Sorry if you said earlier, but what are the spec's for the LED's your using?

I have been working on a small dimmable driver to power some 5mm blue LED moon lights, think it could work nicely with your setup if you can be bothered to make a small PCB out of tripad?

 

[StandbySetting]

After an hour of running, the LED's really aren't very hot at all, I don't think I'll need a fan, the LED's are 3W 3.4-4V 0.75A 5500 Kelvin.

 

[Plecc]

Wow,

So that little driver can supply 18W, where did i come from?
I was sure you would be using the 1W LED's. are the 3W ones a bit overkill?
I would like to make something similar for a reef tank! but i was planning on using the 1W LED's would you recommend the 3W ones for saltwater? (with corals)

 

[StandbySetting]

I've not really used them before so I couldn't comment, but yes the driver can carry 24W of power, here's the tank with the lighting above it:

 

[Plecc]

That looks great!
They really show off the colours of the plants well, very crisp/clean light!
i was worried the beams from the LED's would be quite narrow and show up as disc's on the bottom of the tank when spaced that far apart.
Nice work!

 

[SchottayB]

Good job with the LED's looks nice!

 

[beechey]

sorry but wanted to do this ages ago for spare tank!!! where you get the leds from also what are them black blocks the leds are on??
and the plug part how have you wired it up??

 

[StandbySetting]

The LED's were from Hong Kong, the black blocks are heat sinks and the wiring is really simple, I took a 24V 1A transformer, snipped the end of and wired the positive and negative wire to its respective terminal on the LED driver.

 

[Million]

Now this is interesting. I'm looking at making a hood myself for a clearseal tank I bought hoodless (shops wanted £40 for a plastic hood without lighting!).

I can solder, however my electronics knowledge is limited to school CDT lessons quite a few years back. I have a 70l low light (11w CFL at the mo) tank, and I was thinking 6x 1w high power LEDs would do the trick. Looking on Maplin's website I see http/www.maplin.co.uk/1w-high-power-led-with-pcb-511367, and http/www.maplin.co.uk/constant-current-led-power-supply-511375?ordercode=N93JR. Am I going in the right direction?