Fabricating your own LED's

I was reading an article on here about some guy using a 300w LED fixture and yielded a little over a gram/watt. This got me thinking, and as you all know LED's are still new to the market and therefore prices are pretty damn high (~$800 for 300w). So i was looking around and decided I wanted to try and make my own. If you could make as many 300W or 600W fixtures as you want and got over a gram per watt while being 80% efficient opposed to an HID, then your profit margin would shoot through the roof!!!!!

I wanted to know if anyone has ever attempted or has any usefull technical information about fabricating LED fixtures


http://www.ledgrowlights.info/makeLEDgrowlight.php

I done it.

I done a lot of it.

Like, 1500 watts of it.

-I got a 1200 grow underway right now.

As for DIY,

there is a plethora of problems you have to solve. It is not easy.

I have spent, damn, well over 1000 trying to get what I have...

Good thing i live in the moment, am excited for the future, and forget the past.

Its' been over a year since I started the project, but now I am beginning to think I know what I'm doing, which is a very intimidating thought indeed.

Its best, unless you can solder profficiently, to wait it out. It is definitely not worth it to build your own, even if you can get it right the first time, as you still have to get the tools, buy and pretty much pay retail for the low quantities of raw supplies which sucks, and you have factor in the you-only man hours of labour and research. It really truly took me around 100 man hours to complete the arrays I have now.

If you want to start,

the first thing to do is figure out which led package you want to use. The difficulties will line themselves up after that.

Peace!

+rep Treeth, for the hard work and the truth of the matter.. Out of curiousity, what rail to rail voltage are you running, and roughly how many of each colour per parallel channel??

12 volt rail. The most efficient to work with... and design circuits for.

The other rails don't run much amperage either,... which is of course the name of the game.

The way I ended up doing it, and I cannot say that this was the most efficient way,

was 3 leds in series, and I have... 36 of those on each psu,

which has two 12V rails rated for like 27 and 16 amps which is a joke.

I killed 3 of those.

I've never felt an AC line (power in) so hot I couldn't touch it before.

I trip my breaker constantly. I've just finally established a happy co-existence with it... I really hope that it doesn't melt.

ehhhhhhh, I've never been able to talk technical about this shit!

i got 4 ficture on ebay 4 100.00 a total of 225 on each duel spectrum (red and blue) 900 total leds 4 100.00 bucks

You do know not LEDs are created equally right?? What wavelengths? And how many watts total consumption?? At 11cents/LED I wouldn't be optimistic

Treeth said:

12 volt rail. The most efficient to work with... and design circuits for.

The other rails don't run much amperage either,... which is of course the name of the game.

The way I ended up doing it, and I cannot say that this was the most efficient way,

was 3 leds in series, and I have... 36 of those on each psu,

which has two 12V rails rated for like 27 and 16 amps which is a joke.

I killed 3 of those.

I've never felt an AC line (power in) so hot I couldn't touch it before.

I trip my breaker constantly. I've just finally established a happy co-existence with it... I really hope that it doesn't melt.

ehhhhhhh, I've never been able to talk technical about this shit!

Click to expand...

You goofed somewhere then, or have a fault in your psu.. Do the math, a pc power cord is made from 18awg wire.. Specs conservatively say that can carry 2.3A for power transfer iirc, and NO WAY IN HELL should you be drawing more than 280W on that setup..
Also, why bother with psu's?? Why not use 120V straight up through a 1:1 isolation transformer and a hefty rectifier?? (or hefty diodes to make a rectifier..)

Also btw, psu's are designed to run with a minimum load (0.5A should do) on the 5V rail, without this, the 12V rail is extremely flakey..

I did not know that about the 5V...

I've now tried three different smps models, and have had success on two out of three; with only bridging the power good line... and Without any sort of resistance either.

So the other one that would cut out... it was probably the 5V line then. That psu really had me frustrated, I'll put it to work tomorrow though, thanks.

-Why not build my own supply?

Um, because I paid 15 bucks per supply, and got nice little cases, a fan, and UL standards!oh, and active power factor correction. Good luck doing that at home for less than 15r bucks.

But really, there was no reason for me to increase the already high man hours I put into this project, or introduce more variables for me to look after. And why reject such a well regulated supplies? LED's are relatively sensitive pieces you know...

-Little story,
There was a member on cannabis, the physicsnole, who really got me started on this project, by pulling together truly meaningful sources and ideas. He was quite enthused to take the whole project on himself, and got started building his own supply,... A task which killed the project. He accomplished next to nothing, what the commodity computer industry does for nearly nothing. He lost his time, and had to move on, with nothing to show for his passion.


Did I calculate my draw wrong?

Eh, not by much.

I ask for around 20A per supply... 235 watts.

Once I tried drawing a full 30... and 'they' handled it for a time... which is when the lines were truly 'too hot to touch'

u guys got me thinkin bout tryin some out. I hav an old psu and a soldering iron, but i was thinking about buying a huge ass bread board and just using that as a fixture... it would probably melt tho if i try using any kind of LED's that would be worth while.... heat would prlly be an issue

You'll want no more than 10ohms, and should be rated for atleast 5W.. These usually look like little blocks of clay with leads/heatsinks, and I harvest them out of monitors/tv's..

Sandbars right?

cool. got a couple trash crts in the basement. ONLY A COAX INPUT!>! what the hell.



Shit. Here is the the thread!

I'm ashamed I failed to remember this before.

Cuttings2colas is at just this;

I wonder how it's going by now...

Check it out!

Yea sandbars I guess.. Look for 10ohm shunts..