Dimlux 630w CMH Expert series issues, anybody any ideas how to fix?

[bigbadbiddy]

Howdy folks,

I own both a 630 and 315 w version of the Dimlux CMH Expert series (the spaceship looking one, well known afaik).

Anyway, I used both for about half a decade, had to change the bulbs eventually.

When I first mounted the 630w CMH in the growroom I fucked up and used yoyos with simple plastic hooks (that were intended to go in the other room and hold the lightweight MH in the veg room). Anyway, overnight it fell down a couple feet.

Fixed it with the right yoyos and aside from a tiny bend in the reflector I never noticed anything, it ran fine for 5+ years.

During my last grow (couple years back) it however failed to start sometimes. I tried with a different timer switch, same result (although I realized even the high end timer switches need replacement after a few years to work reliably).
It sometimes does start but not always and I had the red error light indicator on the ballast when it failed.

Its not very easy for me to send it into Dimlux to check, besides they probably will ask the equivalent of a new balast or whole fixture to fix it.

The 315w version still works fine after all these years, they were purchased together and used exactly the same amount of time.

I wanted to hand it to an electrician friend of mine, open up the balast and see if there are any bad soldering spots or the like or something bent from the impact all those years ago after all and gave in over time.

Anyone else have any experiences with something remotely similar and suggestions of how to fix it?

I am setting up a new tent grow with living soil since its legal here now and wanted to keep using the 630w one if possible. Otherwise I likely switch to LED and use the 315w CMH for the smaller tent.

Bless y'all and thx for any feedback

 

[Creeperpark]

Howdy folks,

I own both a 630 and 315 w version of the Dimlux CMH Expert series (the spaceship looking one, well known afaik).

Anyway, I used both for about half a decade, had to change the bulbs eventually.

When I first mounted the 630w CMH in the growroom I fucked up and used yoyos with simple plastic hooks (that were intended to go in the other room and hold the lightweight MH in the veg room). Anyway, overnight it fell down a couple feet.

Fixed it with the right yoyos and aside from a tiny bend in the reflector I never noticed anything, it ran fine for 5+ years.

During my last grow (couple years back) it however failed to start sometimes. I tried with a different timer switch, same result (although I realized even the high end timer switches need replacement after a few years to work reliably).
It sometimes does start but not always and I had the red error light indicator on the ballast when it failed.

Its not very easy for me to send it into Dimlux to check, besides they probably will ask the equivalent of a new balast or whole fixture to fix it.

The 315w version still works fine after all these years, they were purchased together and used exactly the same amount of time.

I wanted to hand it to an electrician friend of mine, open up the balast and see if there are any bad soldering spots or the like or something bent from the impact all those years ago after all and gave in over time.

Anyone else have any experiences with something remotely similar and suggestions of how to fix it?

I am setting up a new tent grow with living soil since its legal here now and wanted to keep using the 630w one if possible. Otherwise I likely switch to LED and use the 315w CMH for the smaller tent.

Bless y'all and thx for any feedback

It's time for a new light friend. You can't trust a light that doesn't come on every time. I had a ballast do that right before it went out completely.

 

[TrifektaSeeds]

I'll give you a better solution
Buy 600W HPS.

 

[bigbadbiddy]

Thanks for the feedback guys (and/or gals).

Yeah they did give enough mileage I suppose.

The thing is I didn't land on CMH by accident back then and was very happy with the results especially in terms of terpene profiles.

In the meantime I found out that CMH is more or less going extinct and being less and less produced. Bulbs for good prices disappearing everywhere only 100€ plus per bulb these days.

On the flipside, the fixtures have become quite cheap! Cheaper than what I paid nearly a decade ago lol.

I actually found a Gavita 630w fixture including the bulbs for less than 400€ so I probably just spring for one of those.
The 315w Dimlux I will just keep running for now as it has never failed so far. If it ever does, I do have ye ol faithful MH on backup and would just buy another CMH fixture then.

If all else fails, I guess its time to swap to LED in the end.

Thing is, I run my own solar power where I grow and thus am happy to use as much energy as I can produce cause they fuck you over if ou feed it into the greed and pay you pennies on the dollar.
So electricity consumption isn't really a factor for me.

Cheers y'all

 

[Rocket Soul]

Thanks for the feedback guys (and/or gals).

Yeah they did give enough mileage I suppose.

The thing is I didn't land on CMH by accident back then and was very happy with the results especially in terms of terpene profiles.

In the meantime I found out that CMH is more or less going extinct and being less and less produced. Bulbs for good prices disappearing everywhere only 100€ plus per bulb these days.

On the flipside, the fixtures have become quite cheap! Cheaper than what I paid nearly a decade ago lol.

I actually found a Gavita 630w fixture including the bulbs for less than 400€ so I probably just spring for one of those.
The 315w Dimlux I will just keep running for now as it has never failed so far. If it ever does, I do have ye ol faithful MH on backup and would just buy another CMH fixture then.

If all else fails, I guess its time to swap to LED in the end.

Thing is, I run my own solar power where I grow and thus am happy to use as much energy as I can produce cause they fuck you over if ou feed it into the greed and pay you pennies on the dollar.
So electricity consumption isn't really a factor for me.

Cheers y'all

Add some led strips or boards to your 315 to wet your feet. HID + leds is a favourite combo of many in low temps areas.

 

[bigbadbiddy]

suggestions on LED brand? I could but dont want to bother soldering myself.

I read in the other thread that spider farmer is supposed to be good and they seem affordable compared to other brandos

/Edit

Also: I imagine in this scenario the cmh goes on top and I use 4 smaller LED fixtures in each corner?

 

[Rocket Soul]

suggestions on LED brand? I could but dont want to bother soldering myself.

I read in the other thread that spider farmer is supposed to be good and they seem affordable compared to other brandos

/Edit

Also: I imagine in this scenario the cmh goes on top and I use 4 smaller LED fixtures in each corner?

It kind of depends on which market youre in, what space you want to cover and if veg and flower in the same space. There are some strips specifically made for growing (somewhat more expensive); here it would matter somewhat which diy shop youre close to, in order to get less shipping.

or you can buy standard samsung/bridgelux comercial strips from one of the global distributors: digikey, arrow electronics pr mouser. Or even a more local distributor.

If you want creme de la creme growstrips i sincerely recomend @Grow Lights Australia
Efficient, great real fullspectrum from uv to far red, nichia top diodes and water proof; if you seal the connectors with a bit of silicon you can litterally hose the down. But import from australia.

 

[Phytoplankton]

My go to is HLG, Grow Lights Australia makes good lights, but they are very, very, expensive. I'd go all LED unless you want the additional heat from a hybrid. LED's are more economical on power consumption.

 

[GoldenSyrup]

Anyone else have any experiences with something remotely similar and suggestions of how to fix it?

Dimlux made a huge booboo with their CMH units - at one point they even refused replacements on the lamps...

The CMH lamps are meant to run low frequency square wave control gear, the Dimlux CMH Ballast are ultra high frequency! They were replacing so many lamps in the end they stopped honoring the warranty and wouldn't replace the lamps, eventually they stopped coming with Philips lamps and started coming with their own Dimlux lamps - Im not sure if they continued to honor the warranty after that as all trust was lost and I never gave them a second look. Once bitten n all that.

Surprised you've had so long out of the lamps/units, but maybe the issue is related (unless the now branded dimlux lamps aren't actually real CMH lamps so as to run on the control gear... anyway, just speculation)

 

[TrifektaSeeds]

Why not go with HPS ?
Cheapest option and a better light source when it comes to growing indoor at a high rate.
The main focus is always light output and spread of that light
LEDs owns both categories on paper but once you count for options such as dimm, loss of IR and heat, size of panels or boards, not to mention a lot of harmful radiation that they emitt on to you and your plants, after all that they are pretty much equivalent and sometimes subpar (depending on environment mainly) to HIDs with the right reflectors.
CMH has a nice spectrum but each wave in that spectrum is weak and takes a lot of power to make, making them low output lights for the same watt HPS use.

 

[Rocket Soul]

Last time i checked CMH has higher output than HPS on a watt per watt basis, at least in photon count which is what photosynthesis work on. Lumens are for humans.

"My go to is HLG, Grow Lights Australia makes good lights, but they are very, very, expensive. I'd go all LED unless you want the additional heat from a hybrid. LED's are more economical on power consumption"

- HLGs board + heatsink kits are incredibly good value for anyone US based.

 

[TrifektaSeeds]

On paper yes, now let's get back to reality..do you have a bulb like that ?
What makes more light, 600w hps or 630 CMH ?
Think my man think

Photon count is lumens, total light output is total photon count in a sphere.
Lumens is the broader spectrum, par is shorter, I don't need to go deep if lm or par is better because science already knows all wavelengths have effect on plants and humans, not just those in the par range and not even in the lm range.
Most of HIDs light is in lm range and even in the par range.
To add, if it wasn't almost fully in the lm range people wouldn't grow crazy plants with it for over 30+ years, oh wait... They are haha

 

[Ca++]

If you have an electrician friend that can handle basic repairs, then he should spot the HT area of the board, and swap out the caps there. There may well be a ladder of smaller ones, rather than a HT transformer. Which are often wound on rods. Each circuit probably has switching at the beginning, and the main live will have a shunt on the board to monitor the current.

Though the main reason for poor strike, is old bulb. Sometimes lamps can have high strike needs though. So if you swapped brands, that could be your problem.

 

[Rocket Soul]

On paper yes, now let's get back to reality..do you have a bulb like that ?
What makes more light, 600w hps or 630 CMH ?
Think my man think

Photon count is lumens, total light output is total photon count in a sphere.
Lumens is the broader spectrum, par is shorter, I don't need to go deep if lm or par is better because science already knows all wavelengths have effect on plants and humans, not just those in the par range and not even in the lm range.
Most of HIDs light is in lm range and even in the par range.
To add, if it wasn't almost fully in the lm range people wouldn't grow crazy plants with it for over 30+ years, oh wait... They are haha

Go check your "sources" lol. Lumens are heavily green weighted, blue and red photons are much less visible to the han eye. Its NOT a broader spectrum, your making things up.
A 630 cmh bulb outputs more par but less lumens than a 600w hps, due to being more heavy on reds and blues. Just go check and check, your being wrong again. DE HPS is about the same par per watt as CMH but that means hanging a 1200w which isnt always practical. Also HPS numbers fall off and decrease much faster.
People (including me) have grown with HPS for a loooong time cause it was the best available, and is frankly, not bad but if youre argument is "whatever people use is the best" i think youre in a losing argument cause everyone uses led nowadays except for you and a couple.
Its perfectly fine to not like led bud, you can just say it as a personal opinion, you dont have to make up alternative facts about the sun and magnetisim in order to support your likes if you can put any support behind your claims please link it.

 

[bigbadbiddy]

I can only say from personal use that the end result in the harvest was delightful with CMH.

Granted, I also swapped to organic soil growing when I switched to CMH and did other changes that may have positively influenced things but it was a bit of a revelation to me particularly in terms of flavor/smell/terpenes of the final product so I wasn't looking to tune that.

Just saw no reason to switch from my CMH setup aside from cost efficiency but since I overproduce electricity from my solar panels anyway, the power efficiency of LEDs is not a draw for me.

 

[Ca++]

Hows the cmh vs mh debate looking? I was never fond of mh vs hps, but it was nice auxiliary lighting. I imagine cmh is just more efficient then mh, and so with no power concerns, it would just be one of extra heat.

I can't really ignore that LED has replaced everything except heaters. While MH was a great UV source, which was likely a negative. Though maybe not in some circumstances.

Perhaps a 600w hps set with additional mh lamp is an option. Not the hps gear to mh conversion lamps though. The hps gear chosen, should be capable of running a real mh. I think in time, the hps would see more use towards the end of flower, while the mh was good for veg.

 

[PlastikeRubba]

The Dimlux cmh ignitors were junk. They replaced a million of them. Ask me how I know.

 

[jayr1787]

Cmh blows hps out of the water every time for trichome production and terpenes.

 

[bigbadbiddy]

Cmh blows hps out of the water every time for trichome production and terpenes.

without running tests or conducting any science, that was my anecdotal impression as well.

With LED I would a) be worried about a step back in that regard and b) I actually have colder climate so the added heat from the CMH is a blessing.

As we speak I am looking into a 1,20 x 1,20 wood or metal construct to lift my flower bed off the floor not only for drainage but also to further insulate from the cold floor in the basement.

/Edit
and I will probably end up welding that shit together my own self. Can't find shit from DIY stores or whatever that would work and cutting a wooden transport pallet together sucks balls cause they are too high and thus cost too much head room. I just need a centimeter or two off of the floor thats enough

/Edit 2
The only drawback from the 630w cmh was that with stretchy variants I sometimes had burned tops in the old setup. But that one was max 1,80m height. This time around I have about 2.00-2.20 in height (forgot which tent I went for in the end lol) so that will be less of a concern. With the 315w CMH didnt have burnt tops either btw.
Oh and this will be the first time in my life where I can access the plants from 3 directions. Before I always had to access them from the front which made things like a scrog net etc pretty much impossible.
This time I definitely want to work with trellis netting and get an even canopy going for the first time in my life.
In the past I have been all about quality and didn't care for yield.
While that is still true to an extent, the plant limit here puts a new premium on weight efficiency in the end.

 

[Rocket Soul]

without running tests or conducting any science, that was my anecdotal impression as well.

With LED I would a) be worried about a step back in that regard and b) I actually have colder climate so the added heat from the CMH is a blessing.

As we speak I am looking into a 1,20 x 1,20 wood or metal construct to lift my flower bed off the floor not only for drainage but also to further insulate from the cold floor in the basement.

/Edit
and I will probably end up welding that shit together my own self. Can't find shit from DIY stores or whatever that would work and cutting a wooden transport pallet together sucks balls cause they are too high and thus cost too much head room. I just need a centimeter or two off of the floor thats enough

/Edit 2
The only drawback from the 630w cmh was that with stretchy variants I sometimes had burned tops in the old setup. But that one was max 1,80m height. This time around I have about 2.00-2.20 in height (forgot which tent I went for in the end lol) so that will be less of a concern. With the 315w CMH didnt have burnt tops either btw.
Oh and this will be the first time in my life where I can access the plants from 3 directions. Before I always had to access them from the front which made things like a scrog net etc pretty much impossible.
This time I definitely want to work with trellis netting and get an even canopy going for the first time in my life.
In the past I have been all about quality and didn't care for yield.
While that is still true to an extent, the plant limit here puts a new premium on weight efficiency in the end.

For that type of space your idea with cmh in the middle and 4 boards hanging in each corner is excellent. Id check out horticulture lighting groups board + sink deals and get a single driver for the 4. As for quality/uv: you can fairly easily add violets and near uv with leds, its not really that expensive or inefficient anymore if youre happy to do some soldering on your own. Uv strips tend to be quite expensive still but are available from a variety of lighting brands.