Finally some Mars Bars and my lights are going up

Z

Zulunature

Well-Known Member
Hi all firstly a big thanks to all that contribute to the RIU forum here without your sharing I'd be still thinking about what to do.

Have done a number of runs under Mars lights, which was a very bad purchase but that's the way it goes, and achieved fair results though we did keep adding more and more lights (watts) to get there in the end.

However the Mars Series 2 lights have a built in design flaw and will eventually fail but along the way the flowering period will increase steadily. We started at 9-10 weeks and on our 6th cycle it was 12-13 weeks to complete same plant (cloned) same everything but each time a little longer.
This occurs due to the lenses on the Mars series 2 going opaque eventually leading the diode to fail due to heat stress taking out the remainder of the string in the series or as in most cases a section of the panel supplied by that driver.

Warranty ?

What warranty they simply fobbed me off like so many others...

Anyway after many hours of drilling, sawing, tapping and a fair amount of swearing I've completed my Mars Bars and what I like to call my Heavies.

Couple of pics to show, sorry no build pics as such, just me doing this and under really difficult circumstances.

I'll try to do get more pics of our setup and show a run with these fantastic cobs.

Mars Bars CXB3590 750ma Mars Drivers 1 - Copy.jpg
Mars Bars CXB3590 CD Bin on Mars Hydro 750ma Drivers - Copy.jpg
CXB3590 CD Heavy Bars 1400ma Meanwell Drivers - Copy.jpg CXB3590 CD Heavy Bars pic 2 - Copy.jpg

Feel free to ask any questions ...

Each Mars Bar draws 125W from the wall and the Mars Heavies top out at 225W
There is still one more Mars bar to be hung just waiting on some new BJB holders and the Angelina reflectors to suit as I'm putting CXB3070 BB 4K cobs on that bar (already had them in a Mars Series 2 that I copied Growmau's build on).

Anyway a huge thanks to all.
 
Z

Zulunature

Well-Known Member
Airwalker16 said:
Why lenses on the inner most bar?
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Nice pickup Airwalker I should have stated that particular bar is CXB3070 AD 3000K and was my first Mars bar conversion and have only just found from
Mark @cutter that BJB holders can be purchased to take angelina reflectors which would have been my choice.
 
Airwalker16

Airwalker16

Well-Known Member
Zulunature said:
Nice pickup Airwalker I should have stated that particular bar is CXB3070 AD 3000K and was my first Mars bar conversion and have only just found from
Mark @cutter that BJB holders can be purchased to take angelina reflectors which would have been my choice.
Click to expand...
So just buy the holder/reflect kit from either him or PLC and replace the holder. You'd still be able to use those lenses if you so please with the BJB's.
 
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Z

Zulunature

Well-Known Member
RainDan said:
Looks nice - I like your attention to the electrical connections. Great job.
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Thanks when I started this project I had a long standing apprehension of soldering as over the years I'd never felt comfortable with my end results, I can now say I'm confident and extremely happy with my soldering ability now.
 
Z

Zulunature

Well-Known Member
Growmau5 said:
that is so clean. YouTube would go crazy for a detailed video on that. keep it up amigo
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Thanks Growmau I worked very hard to be as neat and tidy as I've seen your work on the lights, it took forever to drill and tap out the hundreds of holes required to build these little darlings.

I cut my heatsinks down to smaller lengths so I could get a decent spread on the cobs, so lot's of deburring and redrilling of those for mounting to plate.

It was your video's that inspired me (and the fact that multiple Mars lights started to fail) and resulted in the Mars Conversion light which was a direct copy of your light rebuild.
Ran that over part of the last grow and our White Widow looked totally different in the flowers structure. (More bulk the Mars lights made it foxtail like crazy).

So at the end of the grow I converted that light to what I call a Mars Bar, I still have 14 Mars Drivers to build lights with and will probably try to get onto the Citizen LED cobs but it's not like we need them, just I can't stop wanting to build light bars now.

Couple more pics of the lights with some new girls in the room, things got a bit out of hand with them so we'll spend a week or two getting them into shape for the flip to flowering.
 

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Z

Zulunature

Well-Known Member
don benosee said:
Where'd you get the heatsinks from, mate?
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The heatsinks in the Mars Bars are from the Mars Lights, the Heavies are from Fastron (Oz) think they're H42 from memory and very bloody heavy as well, 10Kg per sink and bloody expensive compared to pin heat sinks which is what I'd recommend to everyone to use, especially if building Mars Bars due to the crazy hours needed to reuse them the way I did.
 
Z

Zulunature

Well-Known Member
Okay little update.

Managed to finally get clones into the room and now 9-10 Days under cobs.

So far everything is exceeding my expectations even with all the reading and digesting of fellow RIU cobbers.

Canopy temps are around 28c and RH is kept between 45-54%.

Plants had suffered a bit in the last few weeks before going in due to a number of things they've completely recovered now and seem pretty happy.

9-10 Days under cobs table 1

Day 9-10 under cobs table 1.jpg

9-10 Days under cobs Table 2
Day 9-10 under cobs table 2.jpg
And some attached pictures of table 1 above canopy shots.
 

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