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Found a couple of good AU sources for DIY LED gear

bonsai

Member
Hey all, I'm not in any way involved with them but have had good dealings with all three of these suppliers and found their service, prices and quality all excellent so wanted to give you a heads-up in case you're about to send more dollars overseas :gday:

3W Cree LEDs from Cutter Electronics in Melbourne - http://www.cutter.com.au/products.php?cat=Cree+XPE
The "royal blue" Cree XPE they stock are the brightest bin available, so best bang for your buck. Admittedly the red falls short of the desired 660nm, but LED aren't all that economical on their own so for flower I'd still be using LED as a supplement to HPS or whatever's working for you. I've got three light bars built with 7 diodes per 25cm long light (for a micro cab) and I'm totally blown away at how much light these suckers put out and how far the 3W diodes project their lumens. Get the diodes pre-mounted on isolated metal-core boards for 50cents extra or whatever it is. TOTALLY worth it, saves you stuffing around with krylon tape / copper tape or any of that bullshit. Glue 'em to a heatsink with some thermal paste (jaycar, cutter, ledsales etc) solder a wire between each and you're laughing.

Heatsinks from Conrad Heatsinks, also in Melbourne - http://www.conradheatsinks.com/ Excellent quality, also very happy with the service. When I finished building mine I ran them for 2 hours and after that time the heatsinks were still cold to touch. Masssssive overkill, perfect for our 40°C+ summers.

The part of the picture that's missing is a source of economical constant current drivers. These 700mA 15-24V drivers from ledsales.com.au are fantastic value for money and idiot-proof to hookup. If you're willing to run the blue/white LEDs at only 700mA instead of their max 1A, you can combine four royal blue and 3 red per driver. One driver, one heatsink and 7 diodes would keep a PC server case brimming with bonsai mums for ten years.

Peace :blowbubbles:
 

alkalien

Member
I run heatsinks with 100mmx250mm with up to 80W of Osram LEDs, at this power you will need a fan though.

Those small platines, we call them stars, are great, allways try to get them! At least for the Crees, which have the soldering points on the bottom side. Reflow soldering sucks...
 

SilverSurfer_OG

Living Organic Soil...
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Cool LED's are the future! Very happy with my digital 1000W for now though! Maybe the carbon tax will change that lol :/

I bought a bunch of led screw in bulbs on ebay in bulk and think i need drivers to run em. They screw in to regular light sockets but dont light up.

Cheers for the info!
 

bonsai

Member
SS_OG: are there any markings on the bulbs? They may be intended for 110V mains? Units that have regular light fittings will have an internal driver.
 

budlover123

Member
alkalien; said:
...Those small platines, we call them stars, are great, allways try to get them! At least for the Crees, which have the soldering points on the bottom side. Reflow soldering sucks...

That is all I gave ever worked with, with the star boards it's practically regular soldering, these leds have the reflow solder is underneath, I think I read you need some kind of oven to connet them.

I know that circuit tape stuff is involved, but how do you get the leds to stay connected to the tape? Line them up and put it in the oven? (can you use a regular oven for that?)
 

alkalien

Member
You can either use hot air to solder them, which is tricky because you will most likely kill the lens and the wohle chip or you can use a oven. There are quite a few tutorials on the net, where they explain how to convert a cheap pizza oven into a reflow station. This will take quite some while and you'll kill a few chips on trying to set up everything.

The chip will be held by the surface tension of the liquid soldering paste, usually there are small gaps on the surface you want to solder on where the chip will be pulled from this tension. There are quite a few problems though. You have to absolutly make sure that there is no electrik link between the soldering points underneath your chips, if there are, you'll need to start over again.

Use the stars!
 
C

CLOWD11

Theres a lot of talk in this thread but no pics of lights or results.
Anyone?
 
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