LED lighting project

LED lighting project:

Hey guys, I thought I would share my LED lighting project adventure that I recently just finished. This came from seeing high end salt lighting setups, but didn't want to have to drop the amount of coin to get the same effect.

I know that to do this on a large scale, say for a saltwater setup, it would have cost a lot more than going with standard lighting, but I don't need that kind of intensity over a freshwater tank.

So...here we go.

I ordered all my parts from www.rapidled.com last week when they had a sale running on nearly everything. I ordered 12 cool white Q4 led's with 60 degree lenses. I also ordered the Meanwell dimmable driver. Everything arrived in great condition in 2 days, not bad for free shipping. I'm not going go into all the particular construction details unless someone wants to see it, But I will provide a bunch of pics so you can see the change. This was built for my 125G tank.

Pic of LED


Pic of LED, Installed Lens, and 3/4" Aluminum C channel it's to be installed on. The LED's have a metal back for heat transfer.


Designed layout for the LED's.


12 LED's sitting on 2 bars of C Channel


After the mockup here, I went ahead and drilled all the mounting holes, tapped each of them, and screwed them down with thermal grease between them and the C channel. I soldered everything up and came out with the following conclusion.

Old 4 foot shop light on my 6 ft tank.


New LED light without lenses 2" above water


New LED light with lenses 2" above water


New LED light with lenses approx 6" above water.


The algae on the rocks makes everything look a little green, but I assure you the light coming off is nothing but WHITE!! It a drastic change from using a shop light which to me looks a ton better. The shimmer that you get from the LED's also provides quite the cool factor. But the most amazing part, I actually got a from my wife, who never approves of my projects. So....persoanlly I'm calling this one a success, although I do plan to add another set of 12 LED's to even out the light a bit and bring up a brightness a little more.

Thought, questions, comments, flames?


Scott

I should also mention that the last pic I took off the glass tops and will be running without them from here on out.

Scott

Sure thing....

Material List

12 CREE XR-E Q4 Cool White 3W LED on Star with Lens@ $6.00 = $72.00

1 Mean Well ELN-60-48P dimmable driver = $40.00

2 sections of 3/4" Aluminum C Channel = $15.00

1 9 volt power pack to control the dimmable circuit.

Then of course the wire, soldering iron, solder, and thermal paste, which I all had on hand.

I'm glad you guys like the outcome, I find myself watching the tank a lot more now that I like the lighting I have on it.

Scott


***Edit*** I bought the LED's and driver from www.rapidled.com
Lucky me as they were on sale at the time.

nubz;3645797; said:

i need to do this!

Click to expand...

Order up...it was truly one of the easiest project I've done. I spent about 4 hours on everything, and a good chunk of that was all the drilling and tapping. I hid all the wires in the C channel, so the only exposed wire is next to the LED where it pops through to be soldered. I'll snap a pic here in a bit to show you what I mean. It's kept everything very tidy looking.

Scott

the_deeb;3646471; said:

Looks fantastic! I think I like the initial pic (without the lenses) the best. The lighting looks more even with less of a spotlight effect. The lenses do make it look a lot brighter though.

I've been following LED builds on the reef and planted forums for a while now and was planning on eventually trying this on my next setup. I was daunted by the potential expense but your build shows how much you can drop the light intensity (compared to reefs) and still have it look great.

Do you think the C channel is sufficient for heat transfer? Some of the other builds that I've seen use much fancier heat sinks, which is a big part of the expense.

I'd be glad to hear more details of construction and wiring layout. Do you know how many LEDs the ELN-60-48P can drive?

Click to expand...

To be honest, I was only planning on using the C channel as a test bed as aluminum stock in the size I wanted was fairly expensive. I was a little worried as I've also been following the builds on Reef Central and I always hear that heat is a issue. I can say that with mine, heat is NOT a issue. They barely get warm, the C channel is still cool to the touch. I'm not sure what the difference is, possibly I'm not driving them as hard, but I turned them up to the point where there was not a noticeable brightness difference to the naked eye in applying more juice. As far as how may it can drive, 13 is the max. I am planning on a adding the 13th LED to my string when I place another order because the one I didn't order is leaving a dark spot in the middle of my tank.

It's still too early to see if I have enough intensity to sustain the algae growth in the tank, only been 4 days, but time will tell how well they could possibly sustain a planted tank.

I'll also point out this, picking the right optic, if you choose to run them, is vital to getting the look you want. I chose the 60 degree lens as I really didn't know what to get, so I picked the middle option. Raising them helped reduce the spotty coverage in the tank, but still helped get the light into the lower portion of the tank where most of my fish hang out.

Scott