Building my own LED (question)

Ok so I'm wanting to build my own LED panel, or atleast gain some knowledge into it. I was wondering how many watts i need for a veg light, the area would be 36"x20" and contain a few mother plants and some clones. I know I want to use cree 3w bulbs but I am not sure on what type of heatsink, how many bulbs, or basically anything haha.

I will +rep a time or two to anyone who helps. Thank you people

sdf said:

Ok so I'm wanting to build my own LED panel, or atleast gain some knowledge into it. I was wondering how many watts i need for a veg light, the area would be 36"x20" and contain a few mother plants and some clones. I know I want to use cree 3w bulbs but I am not sure on what type of heatsink, how many bulbs, or basically anything haha.

I will +rep a time or two to anyone who helps. Thank you people

Click to expand...

Piss on the rep, just cool your trying to make the transition- even better youre trying to DIY.

A 3x2' full veg area could be done with 90w easy... diy gives you better numbers to crunch.. space those EMITTERS out on the board

ahhhh I wanna speak to this a little more (^^),

you cant buy a 90w UFO and veg a 3x2' area....

Spreading the diodes out goes MUCH further, you have to account Light Height for your spectrum- but if using all white? does it matter, as much... no.

(I am speaking to this using a 60w/90w white panel to light up a 33x17" footprint for veg..)

(The SGS draws ~122w to cover a 2x3' with white's... -15w for fans)


I could see you pulling off 60-75w to light up a 2x3'....

My veggin setup:

12"X16" - Cloning box - 1W
16"X16" - Rooted clones/seedlings box - 2W
2'X4' - First pot up area - 30W
3'X4' - Final pot up area ( 5 gal buckets - 50W (old school DiY, 30W if updated)


You can see the 30W 2'X3' section of the left and the 50W 2'X4' section is from left to right in the back.




So a little goes a long way when you DiY with top bins. Good luck!

ok so which color is better for veg? White, Blue, or royal blue? I know I'm going to throw some reds in there for mixed spectrum, how long should I make my boards? Im thinking of breaking it up into 2-3 lights so that I can keep it close to the mommies and the clones.
oh and...

ok so now what about lens? are they needed for veg and ifso what angle. Also what driver and what not do you recomend?

Since vegging canopy is shorter and light intensity more spread out, I go without a lens and keep adjusting the height of the modules every week or as needed to keep them tight on the canopy but with a few inches of clearance.

These $6 650mA drivers are about as cheap as it gets but they are power factor corrected and 88% efficient.

If you are running in the 40% range of efficiency you can use 110sq cm/watt of heatsink to get a Tj of 50C (passive cooling). That gives you an efficiency bonus and virtually eliminates lumen depreciation, it will retain nearly its full output for a decade or more of nonstop use. For active cooling you can probably use 2 or 3 times less heatsink but there are others more knowledgeable about that than me because I stick with passive so far.