Well the LED light is all done! :D Hanging above the tank looking all pretty like. It's been a long project & both Jen & I are happy with the out come. Still a few things to tidy up & sort out but they are only touch up things. Thought I might sum up the build with a bit more info on some of the bits & pieces in one post.
I marked out on the heatsink where the LED's would sit along with the holes needed for the wires. It would have been easier to just run the wires along the heatsink but I think drilling the holes & hiding the bulk of the wires on top of the sink looks a lot better with so many LED's. The heatsink's are in total 10ft long, the tank is 10ft 2inches long. Once the number of LED's had been decided on with a lot of patience from
MagicJ Matt G & others, trying to work out the spacing for each was next. Wasn't that fun! :confused: it now sits like this across the front of the tank, at each end the first LED is 120mm in from each end, spacing is then 110mm centre to centre, in the middle of the tank where each heatsink meets the spacing between each centre to centre is 115mm. From front to rear of the tank which is 2ft 6 inches, there are two heat sinks. The LED's are in groups of two, blue/white. The spacing on the heatsink for the groups of two is 40mm, the spacing between each group is 60mm. I hope that makes sense! For the sake of it I'll add that I used a 100watt soldering iron to tin the stars & a 35watt iron to tin the wires & attach the wires to the stars.
I figured the easiest way to keep some sort of order to the wires was to just thread each color wire over the top of the intended LED. Then all I had to do was cut each wire & solder in place. Just had to remember to go from + to - on each LED.
Next on the to do list was fixing the lenses onto the LED's. I was trying to cover the bases with the selection to eliminate any spot lighting or dark spots. With the tank being 2ft 6 inches deep, making sure the light gets to the bottom of the tank was also a concern. There are four color LED's in use- blue, royal, cool & neutral. The lenses are set as- blue=60deg, royal=80deg, cool=60deg, neutral=80deg. I have used two different bin blues. The white base you can see in the pic was from a Aus supplier. They must use a different method to attach the LED to the star. A larger dollop of solder meant I had to modify the lens base to suit. Out came the dremal again.
I made up a frame to hold the drivers & connection boxes from 25x25mm aluminum angle. The idea came from
192 kHz 32 Bit in this
thread. At each end there is another aluminum 50x22 rectangle block the the angle sits on. I used JB Weld to attach the angle to the block. Great stuff when you dont have a tig welder in your garage! Drys overnight & is a liquid metal, so when its dry you can cut, drill, tap or file it. I just used it as a glue & it works great. I cut slots into the angle to allow for the power cords of the drivers. I also used stainless steel bolts with stainless steel nylock nuts to attach the drivers to the angle.
On the electrical side, I used black plastic project boxes from Jaycar. With so many wires running into the box, I broke them down to channels. The unions that the wires run through where a bugger to drill out. Nothing a cheap dremal kit from Jaycar couldnt fix tho. It was just time consuming drilling so many out. The black wires going in are the + & - for the LED channels, the white wires going in are for the dimming on four channels.
In total there are 16 Mean-Well ELN-60-48P drivers, 8 on each heatsink. Each driver runs 13 Cree XPG/E LED's. On each heat sink there is two groups of 13 & two groups of 12. The 13th LED for each group of 12 is on the other heatsink. I could have mixed 1 blue in with royal & 1 cool with the neutral to keep everything on one heatsink, but thought it better to keep the groups all the same. A little more work wiring them up above the tank but I think it was worth it. Each driver is running at 800mV, I know most run the driver at 750mV but I was thinking on the "bigger" then most tanks theory & thought it would just give it a little more kick.
So once put together it looks like this. The box with no lid is the LED power & dimmer power out. The box behind with the lid on is the main 240V power into the drivers. All 8 drivers are run off one plug, so two plugs only for the LED power.
I decided to go with the typhoon controller from BoostLED to run it all. Nothing flash, but all it has to do is turn the lights on & off, which it does with ease. It turns on each channel when needed & fades each channel in & out. What else do you need for your lights? Its set & forget so I wont tidy up the box for it. It will live above the lights out of sight as I dont want to be playing with it all the time. As long as it works & I can get to it when needed, it's perfect. I sent Boost an E-mail asking if the controller would run 4 drivers per channel, 16 in total? Their reply was " We know it works with three drivers per channel, but dont know if it will work with four, it should" Well I'm happy to say it works with no problems at all & if your looking for a basic controller out of the box plug & play, this will do the job! You can read
DavidS review
here
Then I had to work out how to hang the whole lot above the tank, safely! I used 25x25mm aluminum tube from Bunnings to build the frame. The frame that actually sits on the tank, the aluminum square has a small lip that locks over the lip on the tank. This stops the frame from moving sideways or lengthways when you bump it or working around the tank. I cut it so that it is a firm fit into the inside of the tank. Then just used the normal square tube to work up from there. Very easy stuff to work with & the plastic fittings make it so easy.
To hang the lights from the frame, I used stainless steel swageless fittings from Bunnings. The stainless cable is 3.2mm & I highly recommend that you buy the tool for cutting the cable. I tried with wire cutters & it left a shit finish. The proper tool is about $40 but well worth it & its something else to drop in the tool chest when your done.
The completed light looks great & performs really well. The pic below has the LED's running at only 40% so there is heaps of room to move.
So thats about it really, job done & time for a coffee. Please feel free to leave any comments/questions & I will answer what I can. :D
K&J
