new cabinet I built, getting back at it again.

Tim Fox said:

I wondered the same thing, and I ordered the exact same heat sinks as you, in the description of the item it lists the thermal paste, and I wondered if maybe it came with some on there, thanks for the heads up , now it makes me wonder as well about the polishing because my lazy butt is already dreading the drilling and tapping let alone lapping and polishing, hopefully nothern lights or Apique will have the answer on that one. those cob holders were only like 1.80 each, and I am considering just using the thermal glue paste and stick them on there and call it good,??

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It is Arctic Mx-5 paste, I believe, that comes on the sinks. it can be used...I usually scrape it off, since I have only ever used holders and had to scrape it off, to drill holes....Then I apply my own..which lately has been Prolimatech Pk2....everyone recommends PK3 and its probably worth it, but I got the Pk2 for about $4 from Newegg and it is about half the thermal impedance of the Arctic line, even their really expensive stuff.....so all the PK's are good in my opinion, Pk1,2, and 3....

Here is the Thread on Tapping, the LED section put together....
https://www.rollitup.org/t/a-thread-on-tapping.856745/

I drill and tap by hand with a 13v cordless drill with a adjustable stop-chuck....a tapping block or a hand tapper with a guide are good alternatives for a drill, IF doing by hand.....[you can find those in the tapping thread!...]

I find that putting a small magnetic level on my drill does all the work......and drilling the pilot hole is the critical part, tapping is direct result of how well you drill....

Since the Holders require M3 6mm screws, what is suggested is to use a 4/40 tap and #43 drill bit [.0890" or 2.26mm]

I suggest and own this one... [especially for beginners]
[Spiral flute bottoming tap - this is meant to tap a blind hole [aka a hole with a bottom]
http://www.ebay.com/itm/4-40-H2-Spiral-Flute-Bottoming-ANSI-CNC-Tap-HSS-V-TiN-Coated-YG-1-Part-F8162-/310549937294?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item484e37fc8e

Roll form thread taps are also an option for the beginner!
[These work a little different, they actually extrude the shape of the thread, INSTEAD of cutting a ribbon of metal away, like the spiral flute] [holes can be drilled faster and with less accuracy...generally]
http://www.ebay.com/itm/BALAX-4-40-H5-ROLL-FORM-BOTTOM-TAP-10725-010-NEW-/121437774401?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c46416241


As for sanding and polishing heatsinks.....in the beginning this practice was started with single Red diodes like the Far Red 730nm's or Deep Red 660's....These were the most finicky in the LED world, so sanding and polishing was a little trick to help just that little Nth more in squeezing out performance.....well with White LED's, SupraSPL ran all of these tests and showed everyone how to sand....150, 600, 1000, 2000 grit in sequence...I started there.....

But then he started doing tests with no sanding, stock paste and high power [100w's +] and comparing them against his very lovingly polished beauties....sometimes results came out in favor of the heatsinks, where NOTHING had been done to them at all!.....

I clean everything with isopropyl real well, and then apply paste and my mounting method...only if I have a nick or something, might I hit it with 1000 grit sandpaper...

Zoltan32 said:

On another note, what are you guys doing about water? I'm sure with soil its much easier to manage, but I'm going to need ~10 gal every week or two.

I have a 2nd small pond pump I use to drain the container into 5 gal buckets. And the other way around to fill. I leave the buckets outside to collect rain water currently.

My idea is to take some sort of inline filter, stick it in the cabinet, attach a tube on the outlet to drop in the resivoir. Then I can just fill my buckets with tap water, hook my pump up and filter/fill at the same time. Just gotta find the right filter setup.

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Have you ever thought about blumats?
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=blumats

I am hooking some up here this evening....

Abiqua said:

Have you ever thought about blumats?
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=blumats

I am hooking some up here this evening....

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i was thinking something along the lines of an 'under sink water filter' there are tons of options. They all have various levels of filtering. Some of the basics only include sediment and chlorine and start around $30

Something like this; which filters most everything runs at $100 bucks.
http://www.lowes.com/pd_314544-98-4US-MAXL-S01_0__?productId=4136254

just wonder if my little pond pump can push through it.

anyone have any critiques of my mounting method?? Im still waiting on the kapton tape.. but as you can see, i just used a heatsink mounting bracket, centered it up over a hole i drilled, and clip the heatsink in place... seems to fit pretty well. no clearance issues, plenty of little gaps between wires and such.

also picked up this outdoor fridge and ice maker filter. put some fittings together and hook it up to a hose outlet, hang it on my bucket, and drop in a filler tube... took about 5 min to fill the bucket and dropped my ppm's from 150 out of the tap to 50. i dunno, will give it a shot, it was $15.

Zoltan32 said:

anyone have any critiques of my mounting method?? Im still waiting on the kapton tape.. but as you can see, i just used a heatsink mounting bracket, centered it up over a hole i drilled, and clip the heatsink in place... seems to fit pretty well. no clearance issues, plenty of little gaps between wires and such.
View attachment 3367654 View attachment 3367655 View attachment 3367653
also picked up this outdoor fridge and ice maker filter. put some fittings together and hook it up to a hose outlet, hang it on my bucket, and drop in a filler tube... took about 5 min to fill the bucket and dropped my ppm's from 150 out of the tap to 50. i dunno, will give it a shot, it was $15.
View attachment 3367656

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I like it, hell you even left yourself some run for a reflector if you ever went that route.....

Great design, perfect way to eliminate waste heat and it will be Noticeable

so my eyes are burning, lol. Im more than impressed with the results Tim was right, these pics on the internet do them no justice. i still incorporated the cree bulbs ive been running for the last week, ill probably continue to use them until i run out of room.
just a couple notes. when setting the COB on the heatsink, the two i set without doing anything to the factory applied paste set perfectly, and 'stuck' pretty well. One of them i set and removed a COB when doing some testing, so i had to clean and re-apply, it was much harder to get it to stay in place. They seem to be running fine, the heatsink is just barely hot to the touch, but if you put a finger right close to the lens its pretty damn hot, you get a mild feel at 6" out, and hardly noticeable at 10"+. I might end up cutting my holes a little larger too, may even cut the hole centre sections out to expose the bottom of the heaksink. anyway, need to tidy up all my wiring, and figure a few details out.

NICE work !!!

Damn your box looks freaking radical!,, my 2 cents on your question about light venting , I would say yes, cut some holes in that shelf your lights are mounted in, let air get around those cobs, and let the air have a way to "rise" out of the grow area and let the air have an easy path up into the top part of your grow box where your fan can get rid of it, if the hot air gets trapped in the bottom it will just raise the temps more than it needs to, and your cobs will run hotter which will lower their effienciancy, ( I would think), maybe the other guys have ideas on that subject, but wow, I am super impressed, you have yourself an awesome grow cab!

Zoltan32 said:

so my eyes are burning, lol. Im more than impressed with the results Tim was right, these pics on the internet do them no justice. i still incorporated the cree bulbs ive been running for the last week, ill probably continue to use them until i run out of room.
just a couple notes. when setting the COB on the heatsink, the two i set without doing anything to the factory applied paste set perfectly, and 'stuck' pretty well. One of them i set and removed a COB when doing some testing, so i had to clean and re-apply, it was much harder to get it to stay in place. They seem to be running fine, the heatsink is just barely hot to the touch, but if you put a finger right close to the lens its pretty damn hot, you get a mild feel at 6" out, and hardly noticeable at 10"+. I might end up cutting my holes a little larger too, may even cut the hole centre sections out to expose the bottom of the heaksink. anyway, need to tidy up all my wiring, and figure a few details out.
View attachment 3369384

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Well i cut some larger holes to expose the whole heat sink, not too pretty with the jigsaw, but itll work. I can sleep a little better at night.
Im still waiting on two more brackets so i can actually mount the other two, ill get some finished pics of the above section once complete.

just to give an update on the plants; after running a week with just the cree bulbs, I started noticing the copper spots on the leafs, and the edges turning up. With so many variables changing for the week, im not sure what really caused it. Since it was much cooler in the cab, i feel like the hydroton was not drying out well for one, could have been over watering. I also started using filtered water, so maybe just needed cal/mag. I had only been feeding a very mild solution of just dyna-gro too. Anyway, here we are with some good lighting and warmer temps, so I flushed and did a reservoir change. I decided to just start off with the dyna-gro feeding program. Using Gro, protekt, and magpro. I mixed up the lowest solution recommendations and let her go. After a day, things appear to be doing better. copper spots are still present as the curling, but the new growth looks promising.

I started a few more just before my lights went out, so its starting to become a crowd, lol. Well see how many turn out. Im probably going to experiment with each of these a little differently... The smaller ones will start a much earlier flower cycle, probably going to top the larger ones. Ill just have to make those calls as the plants develop, and see how many ladies we have.

Is the problem on New Leaves, Old Leaves or both?

Abiqua said:

Is the problem on New Leaves, Old Leaves or both?

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Just the old ones, newer growth appears normal at the moment.

Better pic of current status

oh the new growth looks so good,

well i got everything wrapped up today. All connections soldered and heat shrunk. Routed and secured all my wiring to the board. As you can see im running a surge protector off my light timer :/ the timer is pretty heavy gauge wire. I just have the fans and my two cree bulbs plugged into it, the LED plug goes directly into the timer. not sure if i should worry much. Anyway, there it all is on one adjustable board, everything is completely secure, can tilt it, flip it whatever. and just one plug to remove if i need to take it out. Anyway here is a pic of up top, and thrown in a pic of my my nutrient array.

Zoltan32 said:

well i got everything wrapped up today. All connections soldered and heat shrunk. Routed and secured all my wiring to the board. As you can see im running a surge protector off my light timer :/ the timer is pretty heavy gauge wire. I just have the fans and my two cree bulbs plugged into it, the LED plug goes directly into the timer. not sure if i should worry much. Anyway, there it all is on one adjustable board, everything is completely secure, can tilt it, flip it whatever. and just one plug to remove if i need to take it out. Anyway here is a pic of up top, and thrown in a pic of my my nutrient array.
View attachment 3372019
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TOTALLY FREAKIN BITCHIN !!! hows that!!! You built yourself a masterpiece way to ROCK IT!

Totally digging the enthusiasm! I'm anxiously awaiting your crafting as well.

so holy crap these things have taken off. The 4 largest are the original seedlings, the misc in the middle came about 2-3 weeks behind. Ive been feeding a mild solution of dyna-gro since the LED lights went up. Using Gro, protekt and mag-pro. PH has been steady at 5.8-6.0. I was using my little ice maker filter arrangement to prepare water for my reservoir. Welllll... the plants were starting to show multiple problems. So I emptied the reservoir and started over. Well this time I tested my tap water's ppm for the hell of it, and ill be damned its back down to 55 ppm fresh out the faucet. a few weeks ago it was at 225ish, we are known for having soft water around these parts, so the city must have been doing maintenance on the system.
Whatever, so i load up a few gallons (without filtering it) into the res. Set PH a little lower, 5.4-5.6, and added the same initial solution per. dyna gros recirculating feeding schedule. EC topped out at .6-.7 if my conversion numbers are correct. The plants seem much happier and recovering from any damages. These lights are rocking tho, I turned off the cree bulbs too, plants aint care'n one bit. and its dropped the temp a few *, was running about 10-12* over ambient temps, now its more like 7*. Its still cool around here and ambient temps have been btw 68-73*

This is not the most ideal plant growing here, Again, this is more of a trail run with some random bag seed. Once i run this first... err. 'experiment', Id like to grow just 2 plants at a time from some quality fem seeds.

Thinking about topping these two on the left side (first pic), they are a little taller than the others, and have some good growth on them. Maybe top those two to 4 . Then letting the others run their course with some training. Let everyone veg out another week, and make the flip.

Lol I have several of the Cree bulbs around my house that started life in my grow cab, but now live in the kitchen and garage, great lights for humans, so the cobs are rock in it huh?

They really are. Plants are very tight, and I think having the cree bulbs over them at first was really keeping them from stretching. Ive noticed a little stretch in the last couple days since i removed the bulbs from the game. My ppm has steadily dropped the last 2 days, from 330 to less than 300. about to add a gallon or two of fresh water/nutes. I need to go ahead and chop some limbs too maybe.

that 400w MH bulb sure was bitchin while it lasted... lol, RIP. Im allready trying to decide if i should add more. I could prob benefit from some lower intensity around the edges and corners. not gonna happen this go'round, but its always an option. Think i like building the box as much as i do the growing.

Zoltan32 said:

They really are. Plants are very tight, and I think having the cree bulbs over them at first was really keeping them from stretching. Ive noticed a little stretch in the last couple days since i removed the bulbs from the game. My ppm has steadily dropped the last 2 days, from 330 to less than 300. about to add a gallon or two of fresh water/nutes. I need to go ahead and chop some limbs too maybe.

that 400w MH bulb sure was bitchin while it lasted... lol, RIP. Im allready trying to decide if i should add more. I could prob benefit from some lower intensity around the edges and corners. not gonna happen this go'round, but its always an option. Think i like building the box as much as i do the growing.
View attachment 3376033 View attachment 3376036

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years ago i grew in a plywood grow box in my garage using a 400 watt metal halide it kicked but, but the box was tall at 8 feet and the fan exhaused right out the side of the garage, so I never had an issue with heat, back then I lived close to the ocean in So Cal and the temps in the garage were always a bit on the cool side so it was a perfect combo for a hot bulb in the small box, its good to hear your cxa3070's are doing well, I really had no doubts about it, but having your first hand exposure and first hand reporting on how they are working for you is really good information, your grow cab looks so good,