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MY DIY LED Build

26K views 16 replies 7 participants last post by  Ryi 
#1 ·
I just put together a DIY project using 15 Cree XM-L Cool white T6 LED's which run around 6500k. The optics are 40 degree. The tank is 100 gallon acrylic, 20" depth. I have a 40 watt dimmable driver on them now which runs at 700mA. The mounting is a bit crude but I do plan on removing the legs and hanging the light rig. I wanted to have it so I can easily adjust from front to back of the tank for now. When put the rig on there and cranked up to full power the angels freaked out a bit and moved to darker ends of the tank as you can see in the pictures, lol.

I have one of those plug in line watt meters which is coming in handy. Full power is 32 watts and it's really bright! At 12 watts it is still quite a bit brighter than the 2 24" T8s I had in there. All the way dimmed it runs at a whopping 3 watts and visually looks about the same as with my previous T8s. The attached pictures are on the same manual camera settings, one running at 12 Watts and one at 32 Watts at full power.

I'm planning on going low to medium light plants and putting the higher light plants directly under the lights where there will be more lumens. Don't know how that will work out really. No C02 for now, just Excel once I get some real plants in there. All of the pictured plants are fake and came used with the tank. Running at 700mA is actually really low for these LED's. They are rated max current at 3000mA! If I want to go higher light is should be fairly easy to do, switching out drivers and changing the LED configuration a bit. Actually, I might have to add some real heatsinks then rather than the cheap aluminum U Channel on there now. They are running VERY cool now even at full so not really sure. They are rated at 700mA at 280 lumens each. At 2 amps, they should be 750 lumens each. I can't imaging how bright it would be with even twice the amperage however.:eek:
 

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#4 ·
Hi Milad,

Thanks for helping me out with the questions I had, it really helped me in putting this thing together. I am very pleased with the light and can't wait to see how it performs with some plants under it. Being able to upgrade to a more powerful driver and reconfigure if needed is a big plus.
 
#11 ·
Thanks! I should have posted pictures from the top so you can see it better. There are two U Channels about 3 1/2 inches apart running from one stand to the other. The LEDs are in two staggered rows, 6" apart on each row. Aluminum is just drilled and bolted together with stainless #8 bolts and and nuts with nylon inserts, lock nuts.
 
#13 ·
I'm still running my 10 X-lm's on a passive heat sink at 2A over a 6ftx2ftx2ft.
10 at this brightness give light to see, but I think I'll need 20 more to get enough light to grow.
I paid a lot less for my 2100mA dimmable drivers than those advertised by Milad although they're not as neat.
 
#17 ·
Interested in the par answer, please.!
I was going to play with some generic leds from DealExtreme over a 10 gallon but had to cancel my orders after over a month of billing but no shipping. Now I'm thinking about just stepping up to some reliable quality from ledgroupbuy and would love to know what you ended up with.

Thanks!
 
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