Building New Panels - Sharing the Process

[rrog]

I'd like to go big block passive sink and see where that takes me. I would want to be able to change out the LEDs later, as Rives suggested, so not sure if that's still self-tapping Torx or stickies?

EDIT: Reading your post Rives, I'd be willing to be more aggressive with the cooling Fan-assist, etc.

 

[rives]

Passive sinks are the ultimate as far as I'm concerned. However, they take up a hell of a lot of area and introduce a number of design restrictions, really taking you away from a compact design. Choices....

 

[rrog]

If they were tall, that wouldn't be so bad. If we needed the footprint of this thing to expand a great deal, then I'd do a hybrid. So is there some math that would determine what I need? 175W panel with 150W operating, and they're ~10W each. Does that translate to a 15" x 15" panel or something like that?

And would a 15" x 15" panel give enough light spread? Seems like it would. Essentially one panel per plant, but assume plants are grouped.

 

[tenthirty]

If they were tall, that wouldn't be so bad. If we needed the footprint of this thing to expand a great deal, then I'd do a hybrid. So is there some math that would determine what I need? 175W panel with 150W operating, and they're ~10W each. Does that translate to a 15" x 15" panel or something like that?

Logic train. who who!!

You have a room,
What size heatsink can you get that fit the room,
Based on the size of the heatsink, how many watts of led can you keep cool,
based on the number of leds on the heatsink what kind and how many drivers do need?


Sounds like you need to start shopping.......

 

[rives]

The following link is to a heatsink spreadsheet provided by SupraSPL. The extension needs to be changed per the post after downloading it. Check out heatsinkusa.com for some nice choices.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=3536569&postcount=42

 

[rrog]

I'm not space restricted, but for my friends closet, I'd like to keep one dimension no more than 15". Those California LEDs had a 200W on a 9" x 9", which just "seems" small, so I'm wanting to go larger for light spread.

Unfortunately I can't access that groovy spreadsheet. I'll look around to see if there's an online calculator.

 

[rives]

It won't download for you? There are a number of them around, but I like this one better than any others that I've run across.

 

[Goldy]

*edit* I just read Goldy's post and would add this - I've bleached the shit out of some plants with my ES330 running at 12"+/-. For the last several weeks, I've been running a 40w cw within 4" of the tops of two small plants, and haven't seen any problems. I'm starting to believe that whites won't bleach.

wicked, just what i was looking for - pretty much confirms what i said before.. will be building a vert array soon. in planning stages at the moment.

awesome place to be, icmag. cant wait to see how this project turns out rrog.

 

[repuk]

Great thread rrog! I'll be watching!

White LEDs won't cause bleaching, I can attest that.

I have had XM-Ls at 1750mA less than 1 inch from the tops for weeks, and have seen no signs of bleaching.

As said blues and reds are the cause of bleaching.

The more I think (for SCROG) on using high wattage (10W) CW / NW, slightly less wattage (but more LEDs) on WW (5W) and 3W for deep reds the more convinced I am, as it maximizes vertical useable height w/o bleaching.

I ended up using that due to WW not being available in XM-L and used XP-G instead (5W) but the more experience I have with them, the happier I am to have ended with this combination.

 

[rrog]

repuk, what deep reds are you adding? Just curious.

My proxy server won't allow the calculator download, but I see there are some online as well.

Anyone think I should build a bit more headroom than 30W psf? I'm thinking headroom is always a good thing, so maybe I should target 45W psf, and move to a panel with 200W, knowing that maybe 25W of blue or red could be dimmed at any time.

Wow- there are a lot of values I need to calculate a sink. Holy smokes. A few parameters involve the conductivity of the LED itself, and I haven't even gone there yet.

Seems I should really be selecting LEDs first. Should I just go Cree for all of them?

 

[rives]

I would go substantially higher for flowering, but I tend to fall into the "overkill is under-rated" category. I would consider 30w/sqft a minimum. My Hybrid fixture, with a 55/45 power split between the PL-Ls and the LEDs, is running 65w/sqft. If I go ahead with my plans to change over to white LEDs, it will go up to 75w/sqft. You could probably get away with far less power, but I go back and forth between a scrog and bushes, and this seems to work well for me.

Regarding the choice of manufacturers, there are several good choices. Cree seems to have the lead at the moment, the Luxeon LXK8 series is what I am currently testing and it looks like they might work well for higher-wattage choices. LEDEngin chips are pretty low efficiency by comparison, but have excellent availability and cost, and have proven to work well. They also come with zener diodes already installed on the stars, which I've been unable to confirm that the Luxeons do.

 

[rrog]

Sounds good. So 300W per panel. This is still OK? If Cree is in the lead, then I'll use them. Do they have different mA ratings that I need to consider? A marrying up with the driver specs?

Thanks for the continued guidance.

 

[rives]

I haven't used the Crees on anything, so I can't add to that without some research first. You can do whatever wattage/panel you want, you just have to keep the cooling ability commensurate with the power that you are running. Habeeb just used Crees, and I think that tenthirty has used them, so perhaps they can jump in.

Yes, the drivers have to match the components.

Future Lighting has a nice drill-down arrangement for selecting drivers - http://www.futurelightingsolutions....y:True,Ro:0,Nea:True,N:918&dsDimensionSearch=

Jameco seems to have good pricing on Meanwell drivers, onlinecomponents.com doesn't have a broad selection but they have the best prices that I've seen for the components that they do carry.

 

[rrog]

That's very helpful, Rives. Thank you.

I will pursue the Crees and Meanwell drivers. Then have a look at how I'll attach them with LED upgrading in mind. That's another factor with the heat sink calc.

 

[guvoo]

cree does not make 660nm leds, only 630nm in the red range
if you need them, try Osram, Philips Lumileds or Ledengin

alternate drivers
http://trpssl.com/led_driver_selector.html

 

[rrog]

That's good to know guvoo.

Is Meanwell a good driver brand? I'd much prefer a high quality brand if I'm putting in all this work and you helpful fellows have invested time with me.

So where am I at?

Well, I'm now looking at 300W panel, 10W LEDs

12 WW
12 NW
6 CW

6 CW on one dimmer driver. Does this mean I want a 60W driver or do you buy overhead in case you want to drive them more? Like a 75W? Assuming I'm going to have a heat sink that NASA would be proud of.

6 WW on a similar dimmer driver. Given the energy difference between red and blue, maybe these two drivers are not the same?

6 NW on non-dim driver.

6 NW on non-dim driver. (same as above)

6 WW on non-dim driver.

So 5 drivers total? I have 18 LEDs scheduled to not dim, so I could divide to 9 and 9 between two drivers.

Should I consider all drivers to dim? Maybe dimmed LED,s have a spectral shift when dimmed?

 

[tenthirty]

Meanwell is the best and can be replaced easily.

 

[rrog]

Thank you tenthirty. No reason to look any further. How do you like my driver assortment?

 

[rives]

As tenthirty said, it's hard to beat Meanwell. The only "problem" that I've encountered with them is that their driver selection seems to top out at 54v. If you have a number of high forward-voltage chips, then you wind up needing more drivers than some of the companies that offer higher voltage drivers.

The only problem that I see with your driver selection is in housing and/or connecting them. If they go in the fixture, they take up quite a bit of real estate and if you remote mount them then you will have to use a multi-conductor cable to hook them up.

 

[xmobotx]

you will need dimmable drivers for the circuits you intend to dim they usually require a 'wall wort' power supply used to regulate the voltage of the dimmed circuit

have you considered individual diodes? {brands}