Batwing Reflector + Cool Tube for 40$

Part 1

Ok so this is my first write up on something like this and I borrowed designs from old OG members. I combined 2 designs, a home-made cooltube, and a home-made reflector. Besides getting the idea from them tho, nothing else is the same because being the cheap bastard that I am, I needed much cheaper stuff than what these guys had used. This is Jorge Cervantes favorite style of reflector and according to him, the reflectors like this, and parablic reflectors offer the most amount of light over a gardens space.

My parts list. - Almost everything can be bought at home depot

38"x24" Sheet Metal Home Depot 9$
They had 2 pieces of 38x24 sheet metal in 2 different departments. Different barcodes and one was priced 19.99 and the other 8.99. Be careful for that kind of stuff if you shop there.

24" Plumbers Tape (bendable metal) Home Depot - 1$

Hurricane Lamp from Michaels Craft 5$

Mogul for HID Local light store 4$ - ebay is an alternate source

2x 3/16" eye screws Hope Depot 1$

4x 3/16" nuts Home Depot 1$

2x 4" duct clamps Home Depot 2$

5x4" duct converter (not pictured) Home Depot 5$

20' 4" ducting (not pictured) Home Depot 10$

Spray Adhesive (not pictured) Home Depot 3$
Mylar ?

4' chain Home Depot 2$

Dollar store picture frame kit 1$ - has wire and little screws in it for the mogul. you're kind of on your own for that part but you can probably manage.

Tools.
Drill 3/16" bit
whatever you need to bend the sheet metal (I used cutting boards and a wall shelf )
a marker.
a knife (i used a kitchen knife)
a screwdriver. (flathead)
measuring tape
an assisstant

Step one.
Measure the sheet metal in half 18 inches.
Mark a center line.

Step two.
Trace your strip of plumbers tape evenly across that center line
.

Step Three.
Time to bend the sheet metal. This is where the cutting board came in handy for me. I was able to brace that in the middle and just bend around it. It was the same width as the plumbers tape. You will have to use something to help you bend the sheet metal. A vice comes in handy here if you have that kind of stuff. A partner helps alot too.

Step Four.
Time to attatch our plumbers tape. Measure out your lamp, it should be about 5.5". Line your tape in the groove in the middle of it. Measure a gap in the tape for the lamp to fit and mark these on your tape. And also mark them on the reflector at the same place. We will be bending the tape at these spots at 90 degree angles and cutting holes for on the reflector.

After those are cut, and the tape is bent, put it in place.

Step Five
Now we will secure the tape and drill 6 holes thro the sheet metal to help do this.You can do this about any way. We will be using the eye screws with a nut below and above the tape to tighten things down. These screws will also be used to hold the chains that let this hang.

Step Six
You can see I drilled 6 holes in my reflector. 3 holeson either end. 1 has the eye screws thro it. They are firmly tightened fown. The 2 holes on the other sides have wire ran through them and tied. These wires are part of what holds the glass tube.

Step Seven
Next we attach our mogul socket. Make sure you put your shade up there in the right place so it hangss just a 1/2" below the reflector. And the mogul will be holding the bulb in the correct place.
I used a screw from that hanging case and screwed it thro into the mogul attachment. Fit perfectly and the plumbers tape is solid enough that I feel it is very secure there. We also run our hose clamps thro the wire loops we made as shown in the pictures.

Step Eight
We are attaching the glass shade now. Slide it between the 2 pieces of plumbers tape. If you measure right it should fit snugly. Clamp your clamps around the shade and thro the wire loops. If you've done this part correct your glass will won't be touching any metal.
The extra length of metal on the far end will be bend back towards the lamp to further brace the tube. Not that I feel it is needed I just prefer to be safe. The ends will be bend out much farther giving this a flatter profile so it can perform as desired.

I will finish this up tomorrow. The mylar will be added and the ducting attached.

looks good. lol mine looks so hillbilly I wont even take a pic. But they drop the temps so well. good luck.

rad....

Thanks guys.

I know it's not as nice as some out there, and it doesn't even have a cylinder glass piece, but damn it was cheap.

I will also be adding uvb tubes at the end of each wing in the future. I havn't planned it out yet but it I will put it up here when I do also.

I just got back from the local hydro shop and picked up the cord needed for the ballast to the mogul. They didn't have my cord set but they had the Sun System entire cord set boxed up for 35$. The guy at the shop cut one apart for me and sold it to me for 16$.

I also picked up a bottle of FloraBloom for 3.12$ and he kicked me a free 20$ sack of Big Bud. What a cool guy.

Where's the pic's of the mylar and duct work?

Yasi said:

Where's the pic's of the mylar and duct work?

Click to expand...

not finished yet. tomorrow this gets hung up so it will definatley be finished then. its fairly simple tho, just use spray adhesive, lay your mylar in after your bends are worked out.

and the ducting is just your standard duct work. I will be adding Zen's diy carbon filter to this along with the stanley blower mod fan.

these are THE BEST style reflectors you can have besides the parabolics - but you can't air cool those.

you can change the bends to control intensity and dispersion as well, letting you "hone" in on a small number of plants or provide excellent dispersion to a larger area. technique shown in this pic.

Well the cool thing about parabolic reflectors is they reflect light back parallel. If the parabola is a true parabola and the bulb is placed at the focus, all light that would be reflected would be reflected back parallel to the focal axis.

So I made a slight revision. I am not using the 5x4" duct converter. It turns out it was just more trouble than it was worth running the 5" over the outside of the glass, and I just ran the 4" ducting right inside and duct taped it on there.

I'm going to be adding the mylar here in a few and it looks like my bulb won't be here until tomorrow (damn HTG was pretty slow on this one- shipped 2/10 - arrival 2/17)

So I will have another picture of the duct work and mylar done. And tomorrow comes the real run.

Ok so I hooked up the ducting and put the mylar on there. I don't have any spray adhesive so I used some "glue tape" And those bends you see are pulled almost non-existant when this is hung up.
I still recomend the spray adhesive tho.

And I also recalculated my cost. Adding the 16$ for the cord set and subtracting the 6$ for the 5x4 converter leaves the total cost at 45$. Still an amazing deal considering the cordset alone was 16$.

very nice build+rep.....have you thought about painting the reflector with flat white instead of the mylar...

nickfury510 said:

very nice build+rep.....have you thought about painting the reflector with flat white instead of the mylar...

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Yes I definately have. I have also considered some Chrome Rustoleum paint. But I had the mylar on hand and it was the cheapest means to an end for me personally. For others without mylar that might not be the case.

So for any others considering this same setup, I would advise that Nick has it right and I'm just a stoner and didn't mention it. You could get away with white paint, chrome paint, of even just the sheet metal if you have nothing else (but its worth using a reflective material, afterall thats what these are made to do)

Tronica said:

Yes I definately have. I have also considered some Chrome Rustoleum paint. But I had the mylar on hand and it was the cheapest means to an end for me personally. For others without mylar that might not be the case.

So for any others considering this same setup, I would advise that Nick has it right and I'm just a stoner and didn't mention it. You could get away with white paint, chrome paint, of even just the sheet metal if you have nothing else (but its worth using a reflective material, afterall thats what these are made to do)

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i made the same thing..just with a double cool tube....i left it raw metal at first but later decided to paint it after reading something on reflectivity...i really like how you put everything together really clean....

Put it in use today.

The duct fan isn't here yet. Not 100% done. But with just the little fans seen on there were runnin 82.

600w hps 400w mh

TRON.would be nice to see the rest of your setup as i have built a cab awith cfl's but am switching soon to hps and am interested in a setup like this

what interests you about this setup that you want to know particulars on?

what kind of space are you working with and what kind of harvest are you hoping to get (perptual?)

the goal with my closet is a 2 tiered grow with 3 sections. the top section is what is seen in these pics. the lower is about 20" high and I plan on doing a mini-sog with cfls, hoping to get a 4oz perpetual harvest every 2 weeks with af strains. this will let me veg down there and flower at the same time, so i can veg plants for my top section at the same time as my afs flower. (af strains flower under 18/6 light)

subscribed

Thanks for the thread.

I picked up my Hurricane Glass today. I always love going into michaels, because they tend to stare at people like me in there.

How did you get the wing bends. Did you just hold it down with your cutting board and bend the edge?

Good work by the way. Makes my DIY light look pretty stupid, but I'm not mad. Just glad I found this before I made another one.

Did you actually use 5 gal of soy sauce?

jigfresh said:

Thanks for the thread.

I picked up my Hurricane Glass today. I always love going into michaels, because they tend to stare at people like me in there.

How did you get the wing bends. Did you just hold it down with your cutting board and bend the edge?

Good work by the way. Makes my DIY light look pretty stupid, but I'm not mad. Just glad I found this before I made another one.

Did you actually use 5 gal of soy sauce?

Click to expand...

Lol, no I scavenged the soy buckets from behind a restaurant.

I made my bends by hand, I just eyed them. The stuff bends real easy. I rolled it in on itself from the tips to the ceter, and then flattened out the creases.

On the initial pics the bends are to much. I wound up bending those much more out. The tighter the bends, the more intensely the light is focused. A more "flat" bend helps give a larger foot-print.


I made a few modifications on my ducting too that I didn't label up here. I had a little problem with my bulb tip being "pulled" to far down towards my glass. I just tightened some stuff up and changed how my ducting was connected and it fixed the problem. Any kind of problems you may run into like this are easy enough to troubleshoot on your own so I didn't bother any kind of write-up on it.

I'm glad you like it and good luck with construction if you decide to make one. If you do, post some pics up here for me of your finished project.

This is an awesome setup!!! Mine looks so ghetto compared to this...lol Great job. I'll be re-doing mine the next chance I get.