Off the shelf retail store screw-in LED and CFL bulb comparisons

[Terpene]

[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=82207&pictureid=2014392&thumb=1]View Image[/url] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=82207&pictureid=2014391&thumb=1]View Image[/url]

The EC of nutrient drop was less than calculated turns out it dropped by 0.5 ec still a supprise.A

THAT. Is fucking cool looking.

If you want to drop some heat out of your space, make it air cooled and you'll be 1 degree F over ambient.

 

[Sunshineinabag]

Let me get my ingenuity juices flowing here............by say aug i should have a contraption to show off. Had a fan like one of those on a graphics card in my ole computer........apparenlty it wasnt big enough for world of warcraft 25 man raids....melted it did

 

[PCBuds]

I got my light finished.

I decided to solder short pieces of wire to all the SIL wires and use heat shrink tubes on them.

I was thinking of using mar connectors because it's easier but that would be 12 of them and too much crap on the cookie sheet.







These automatic wire strippers are awesome.







I put all the wires together with mar connectors.







I drilled holes in the four corners and fed fishing line through them to support it and tie off to.

I wanted to keep everything as low profile as I could.

The whole fixture is really light so I felt it was okay to hang the fixture by the power cord.
I used 18 gauge stranded speaker wire for the cord connected to a regular power cord with mar connectors.











So, it works and I've got it hanging from my ceiling in the living room and the temperature is fine.
The sheet is just a little warm.

The fixture is drawing 61 Watts and the bulbs are rated 800 lumens so with the globes removed, I should get about 35% more light, so my fixture should have a total of about 6,500 lumens.

I tested the fixture with my ohmmeter between the exposed metal of the drilled holes and each wire (line and neutral) and I had no continuity so the power is not getting to the cookie sheet.
The surface of the LED boards is live though, as always. I won't be touching them on purpose. Lol

It is kinda trashy though, lol,
It's nothing like the works of art that Terpene makes.

 

[imakandi]

pcbuds
insane!
more photagraph
pleas


feel like
caveman

lmao

 

[PCBuds]

pcbuds
insane!
more photagraph
pleas


feel like
caveman

lmao

Okay...

Here it is on the ceiling in my living room.










It does work pretty well and really lights up my living room.
I might just keep it there permanently?

It's not CSA or UL listed though.

It's fine as long as I don't reach up and stick my finger in it. Lol

 

[PCBuds]

The SILs I used had a heat sink and thermal paste between it and the LED board.
Newer generation SILs only have the LED board and it just touches the rest of the heat sink on its edges.





The newer version is quite a bit bigger around and has more surface area to help dissipate heat.

Some versions of SILs have a capacitor on the backside of the LED board so a hole would have to be drilled through the cookie sheet (or pizza pan if you wanna go-round) to accommodate it.


I guess just about everyone here on this forum is using the 100 Watt equivalent bulbs and I'm pretty sure they all have an off-board driver like the fixture that Hookahhead made.


I would think that using heat-conducting paste is always a good idea to help keep the LEDs cooler.
They are brighter and more efficient the cooler they are.

Normal glue and silicone is a pretty good thermal insulator and doesn't conduct heat very well.
High-heat silicone just means it can withstand more heat before it breaks down or burns.


Hookahhead's SILs were low wattage and "air-cooled" so a heat sink and thermal conducting paste weren't necessary but higher wattage bulbs would probably benefit from thermal paste or glue.
They would probably be brighter and last longer.

I know that there is thermal silicone that hardens like normal silicone but I ended up buying the wrong stuff.
It's got silicone in it but it stays grease-like.








This is the proper stuff on Amazon.
It's fricken expensive though. It's only 10 grams but you don't need much.





This is 5 grams of the heatsink paste for reference.
The syringe was 10 grams before I used it.
I used about 1 gram per SIL but it was a bit much and squished out the sides.

 

[starke]

Awesome work. You are making me seriously rethink my poor old wooden 1x4 frame with sockets and SILs.

 

[f-e]

For some unknown reason (to me at least) they call it plaster. You can get 5g tubes of this heatsink plaster really quite cheaply.

Edit: I see one pictured is called plaster.

 

[PCBuds]

Awesome work. You are making me seriously rethink my poor old wooden 1x4 frame with sockets and SILs.

Thanks, starke.

I like how is so light. I've got no problem hanging it from the power cord but it does bug me a bit how I've got 120 V running through speaker wire.

I'm sure it's fine though.
Even if you had six 17 Watt SILs (older 100 Watt equivalent SILs), it would only be about 100 Watts and ordinary lamp cord is good for at least 1,300 Watts so my 18 gauge wire is fine as long as the insulation doesn't break down or melt or something.

The cookie sheet was barely warm at all and I don't think 17 Watt SILs would make it too much hotter.
I do have it hanging in my living room where it can breathe and dissipate heat though.


The other thing is the clearance.
You could mount this to a ceiling and only take up an inch of headroom.

 

[imakandi]

very nice pcbuds
thank

hands not good for disarm sil
but can copy cable manager
save 2-3" ?


thank a lot

 

[PCBuds]

For some unknown reason (to me at least) they call it plaster. You can get 5g tubes of this heatsink plaster really quite cheaply.

Edit: I see one pictured is called plaster.

Yeah, I've got the plaster too but it just kinda dries up like toothpaste and doesn't really bond.

You can still work with it though, and just tack the edges on with ordinary silicone like I did or screw them down with the two screws that hold the LED board to the rest of the SIL.

(I don't know if all SILs use screws though)

 

[PCBuds]

hands not good for disarm sil

I've got a big ass, adjustable pliers.
It makes short work out of those SILs.

I didn't have to worry about crunching a driver hiding inside the base though.

 

[PCBuds]

Oh, ...

There's heat conductive tape too which I do have and would have used if I knew my silicone was grease.





It's expensive too but it's a lot cheaper on eBay if you don't mind waiting a month or two for it to ship from China.

 

[bsgospel]

Cookie sheet for the win. I wouldn't have thought of that. Fun build, PC! I might try to replicate it some time.

 

[q3corn]

This is a great showcase of using the SIL's to an even better benefit. I'm inspired to do this at some point!

 

[PCBuds]

I was thinking,
you could build something a bit like Terpene's design and put a sheet of metal across the top of your cab about an inch from the top, stick the LED circuit boards to it and put some holes in it then draw air through the holes and out of the cab.

 

[PCBuds]

Thanks guys.

The whole fixture cost about $10.

 

[noknees]

It does interest me to do a comparison; At the moment i have 3 sets of 640w 8 bar 3k leds in there.

if you've got 40W/ft of 3K strip running nicely, that'll be tough to beat. (yield+efficiency+heat)

would be pretty cool to see a side-by side that big though, especially with a cut(s) you know well.

 

[PCBuds]

Cookie sheet for the win. I wouldn't have thought of that. Fun build, PC! I might try to replicate it some time.

It doesn't have to be aluminum. It may conduct and radiate heat better (I'm not sure) but it's expensive.

And you can go with a pizza pan instead, if you wanna go-around. Lol

 

[q3corn]

I just came across this thread on reddit about safety and modified screw-in LEDs

https://www.reddit.com/r/HandsOnCom...strong_warning_about_removing_the_domes_from/