hempfield
GREAT PANEL and love the different color shots
GREAT PANEL and love the different color shots
DWC 300W DIY LED SCROG Grow: AK47 and Mazar
- Thread starter hempfield
- Start date
Duckhunter-DK
Member
Love ya DIY style mate 
But tell me, which material did you use ind your mufflers?
Looking forward to follow this buildup..!
But tell me, which material did you use ind your mufflers?
Looking forward to follow this buildup..!
This is gonna be interesting...
What distance do you put your LED panel from the plants usually ?
What's the best gram/watt you've had with LEDs ?
Peace, HJ.
What distance do you put your LED panel from the plants usually ?
What's the best gram/watt you've had with LEDs ?
Peace, HJ.
As I said in a previous post, the refill of the res is the most challenging part of the entire grow operation. For this reason I have one small aquarium pump on each of the tubs. The DWC systems are not ready yet but in 2-3 hours of fun work they will be functional.
Love ya DIY style mate
But tell me, which material did you use ind your mufflers?
Looking forward to follow this buildup..!
I really don't know the English name of that material, but it's a very fluffy polyester fiber, used to fill mattresses and pillows. It was cheap it is doing the job extremely well. The muffler was build 2 years ago from a 10cm diameter PVC pipe, 60cm long, drilled with a 15mm mill (it took me hours to drill hundreds of holes) , wrapped in 2 ore 3 layers of polyester fiber and then in 2 layers of thin cardboard. If I put my ear on the exhaust I can barely hear the fan.
The same material I used to fill the box of the silenced fan ( Delta EFB1512HG). It was mandatory to silence the fan because it's very noisy ( 55dB !!!) when running at full power. Anyway, for the moment it's running on ~9V , to decrease the noise. If the situation will demand, I probably increase the voltage to 10,11 or 12V. I used this fan because I had a few sitting on my workshop and they are extremely powerful and proven to be very reliable (being used on IBM Itanium Servers).
Being a DIY LED panel without a solid external case and because it's quite heavy , I don't want to move it to often, so it is placed on the highest position my grow room allows me to put it. My panel has 45 degrees lenses so the light is very well focused , and this give me the option to keep the panel higher. I think the distance between the led lenses and the screen is ~60cm ( 2' ).
If the plants want to be closer to the light, they must grow to reach it.
The best grow with this panel turned to be ~0.67g/W, with 2 plants G13 Haze from Barney's Farm (one in hydro , one in soil), but I am convinced it could be much better because I was away from the girls on the first 3 weeks of flower and I could not control the stretch and the bud disposition :
What I am very curios about is not the g/w result, but the g/kWh . For this I have a power meter ( Kill-A-Watt) installed which measure the entire power consumption of my grow room. I will post readings of it on each phase of the grow and of course, after harvest.
Last edited:
nice grow! i was curious though, at the beginning you mentioned this:
i really like your panel! is there a link to how you designed/constructed it? i love your heat sink design and the fans, it looks very sturdy and well designed...and i bet it lasts as long as the comparable store bought led panels, but i get it didn't cost you 1200 bucks like they charge either! i may have to make a smaller one so that i can have a second small cab, the big cab would pay the bills with 8 week plants like it is now, and i can use a small led grow to flower out some 12 week plants like chems and kushes, and some sativa's i want to try...
ak47 is a dream to grow, awesome yields and tons of trichomes, and mazar is one of the pure affies i looked into before choosing maple leaf indica...im very excited to see your grow play out! you can bet i'll be around!
i have always been told white led's would be useless for growing? since led house lighting came around a lot of people have suggested using them, but don't cannabis plants not absorb white led light? i mean im not an expert by any means but i thought they only wanted reds and blues? what kinda spectrum would white be? basically yellow?
i really like your panel! is there a link to how you designed/constructed it? i love your heat sink design and the fans, it looks very sturdy and well designed...and i bet it lasts as long as the comparable store bought led panels, but i get it didn't cost you 1200 bucks like they charge either! i may have to make a smaller one so that i can have a second small cab, the big cab would pay the bills with 8 week plants like it is now, and i can use a small led grow to flower out some 12 week plants like chems and kushes, and some sativa's i want to try...
ak47 is a dream to grow, awesome yields and tons of trichomes, and mazar is one of the pure affies i looked into before choosing maple leaf indica...im very excited to see your grow play out! you can bet i'll be around!
We take baby steps :
@señorsloth :
The white LEDs are ok for growing plants but not as efficient as the red and blue ones, because they also generate green,yellow and orange light, which is not used by the plants. But when using only narrow band leds (RED and BLUE), the photosynthesis mechanism can be incomplete. Adding wide band light (coold white and warm white) the spike of red and blue it's somehow normalized and the plants can find the "missing" photons.
So white LEDs are good for growing plants, because their price is a little bit lower than the narrow band LEDs.
A few years ago, when the high power LEDs were not so popular and the technology was expensive, it was more cost effective to use only red and blue diodes. Also, some people, having in mind the chart of chlorophyll light sensitivity , thought that is more effective to use only the light with wavelengths closed to the maximum peaks on that chart.
But what did they not tell or they did not took in consideration is the fact that nature is not functioning after a human created chart. This is my personal opinion.
It's true - we want to maximize the ROI, but for small grow operations (like this one) white LEDs are quite OK.
I also have white LEDs (warm white and cold white) above my aquarium and since I installed them the plants have 'exploded', even the total consumed power is less than half of the previous T8 lights.
You can read the story of this panel in this post and see some pictures in my album. It consume 282W and I think no more than 350$ have been spent for materials. Most of the LEDs used on it are quite old (2-3 years) so the today price is much lower (maybe half ?).
If you intent to start a DIY project for building a LED panel I strongly recommend you the thread Building a Home Made LED, where many interesting things related to LED lights are discussed.
I hope they will rise to my expectation also !
@señorsloth :
The white LEDs are ok for growing plants but not as efficient as the red and blue ones, because they also generate green,yellow and orange light, which is not used by the plants. But when using only narrow band leds (RED and BLUE), the photosynthesis mechanism can be incomplete. Adding wide band light (coold white and warm white) the spike of red and blue it's somehow normalized and the plants can find the "missing" photons.
So white LEDs are good for growing plants, because their price is a little bit lower than the narrow band LEDs.
A few years ago, when the high power LEDs were not so popular and the technology was expensive, it was more cost effective to use only red and blue diodes. Also, some people, having in mind the chart of chlorophyll light sensitivity , thought that is more effective to use only the light with wavelengths closed to the maximum peaks on that chart.
But what did they not tell or they did not took in consideration is the fact that nature is not functioning after a human created chart. This is my personal opinion.
It's true - we want to maximize the ROI, but for small grow operations (like this one) white LEDs are quite OK.
I also have white LEDs (warm white and cold white) above my aquarium and since I installed them the plants have 'exploded', even the total consumed power is less than half of the previous T8 lights.
You can read the story of this panel in this post and see some pictures in my album. It consume 282W and I think no more than 350$ have been spent for materials. Most of the LEDs used on it are quite old (2-3 years) so the today price is much lower (maybe half ?).If you intent to start a DIY project for building a LED panel I strongly recommend you the thread Building a Home Made LED, where many interesting things related to LED lights are discussed.
I hope they will rise to my expectation also !
ahhh i see, so the white ones put out all spectrum's, but other ones only emit specific light...so the white ones are similar to regular lamps then, as far as efficiency and grams per watt goes, while the specific red and blue ones don't put out any unnecessary spectrum's so thats where the efficiency comes? lol i am terrible at electrical math and junk but these things are so interesting! i would have bought one years ago if i could get a unit about your size for under 1000 bucks lol
Hiya..by no means am I trying to take over your thread my friend hemp. but I just wanted to let senorsloth know that you can very easily buy good LED lights directly from China for a hell of a lot less than $1000.....
I can't state enough to please not buy into the BS about American made ..etc..etc.. that's all bullshit...99% of store bought/retail bought LED lights come from China. Check Bysen, Eshine, StarVanq, ummm...those are the 3 main ones that come to mind but use Alibaba.com and search for LED grow lights....you'll be amazed at how many results come back. Also, please please please do research and ask questions before making a purchase..
I got mine....both for 665 delivered from China to Toronto....
<add edit>................I'm sure if ya ask real nice..hemp might even consider making one for ya...
..........heheheh
Last edited:
ironcross365
Member
Sr Sloth
Sr Sloth
Here is low watt leds in action, though not yet flowering. Probably no more than 90watts total. Check my journal to follow along
View attachment 188178 View attachment 188179 View attachment 188180 ATTACH]188181[/ATTACH]
Sr Sloth
Here is low watt leds in action, though not yet flowering. Probably no more than 90watts total. Check my journal to follow along
View attachment 188178 View attachment 188179 View attachment 188180 ATTACH]188181[/ATTACH]
That is some nice looking results there PetFlora........real nice... I really like the shade or tone of the light as well...not real harsh on the eyes.. I guess that's all the white light in it with just red as a filler or red and blue as a filler?
Whatever it is..you've got some nice results there..
Great work!!!!!!!
Whatever it is..you've got some nice results there..
Great work!!!!!!!
Building a DIY Muffler
Building a DIY Muffler
Hello my friends,
It was a very busy weekend and I was out for the most part of it so I did not had the opportunity to do too much things on the garden.
As I said, I use a 55dB Delta fan for ventilation and it is quite loud ~55dB. I previously built an sound suppressor (muffler) which does it job very well.
I though that the active carbon filter will act also as a muffler, but I was wrong. Because it is built of Aluminium sheet and because it has a tin end-cap, the filter acts itself like a resonance box, partially amplifying the noise created by the fan.
So I decide to build another muffler, with some materials I had on the workshop.
I used a 50cm long, 10cm diameter PVC pipe which I have drilled with a 32mm mill. For equidistant holes disposition I have created a pattern mask, which I wrapped it around the PVC pipe.
After I marked every hole center, I start drilling with a batetry powered electric screwdriver:
I was quite a messy job, with small pieces of shattered PVC flying allover, but it was fun. At the beginning I was afraid I could not follow the pattern , but I had not problem staying on the marks:
continued in the next post ...
Building a DIY Muffler
Hello my friends,
It was a very busy weekend and I was out for the most part of it so I did not had the opportunity to do too much things on the garden.
As I said, I use a 55dB Delta fan for ventilation and it is quite loud ~55dB. I previously built an sound suppressor (muffler) which does it job very well.
I though that the active carbon filter will act also as a muffler, but I was wrong. Because it is built of Aluminium sheet and because it has a tin end-cap, the filter acts itself like a resonance box, partially amplifying the noise created by the fan.
So I decide to build another muffler, with some materials I had on the workshop.
I used a 50cm long, 10cm diameter PVC pipe which I have drilled with a 32mm mill. For equidistant holes disposition I have created a pattern mask, which I wrapped it around the PVC pipe.
After I marked every hole center, I start drilling with a batetry powered electric screwdriver:
I was quite a messy job, with small pieces of shattered PVC flying allover, but it was fun. At the beginning I was afraid I could not follow the pattern , but I had not problem staying on the marks:
continued in the next post ...
It took around 10-15 seconds per hole and everything was ok until the batteries ran out, right on the middle of the drilling process:
I had two options: to wait several hours until the batteries will charge 100% or to use a bigger, more powerful , AC drillling machine.
With this tool, a hole was ready in less than 5 seconds, but I had to wait for the drill to stop spinning until I could go for the next hole, and because it's heavier than the battery powered tool, my hand became tired in a short time.
In less than 15 minutes the drilling process have been completed:
After that, I cut 2 end-caps from a thick sheet of corrugated cardboard :
The PVC pipe has been wrapped on 4 layers of polyester fabric (used as a fat filter on kitchen hoods) and one layer of thin cardboad :
continued in the next post ...
I had two options: to wait several hours until the batteries will charge 100% or to use a bigger, more powerful , AC drillling machine.
With this tool, a hole was ready in less than 5 seconds, but I had to wait for the drill to stop spinning until I could go for the next hole, and because it's heavier than the battery powered tool, my hand became tired in a short time.
In less than 15 minutes the drilling process have been completed:
After that, I cut 2 end-caps from a thick sheet of corrugated cardboard :
The PVC pipe has been wrapped on 4 layers of polyester fabric (used as a fat filter on kitchen hoods) and one layer of thin cardboad :
continued in the next post ...
After I finished the muffler , it was a pain in the ass to install it between the fan and the carbon filter, because I had to remove and to re-adjust alt the sustaining strings, in my low height growroom.
Anyway, it was a success ! The level of the noise was much much lower than before and no sound could be hear emerging from the carbon filter.
Anyway, it was a success ! The level of the noise was much much lower than before and no sound could be hear emerging from the carbon filter.
Last edited:
Last night I finished working at the DWC systems, so now they are fully functional and the plants have been transplanted.
Because until yesterday the plants lived on a micro plastic greenhouse, without nutes, they seems under developed for their age, but I am sure they will recover very quick.
I had to remove the screens (and they will stay away until the training begin) to work easily with the tubs.
So now they can spread their roots in 15 liters of water. It seems the AK47 has a much faster metabolism, because she already has multiple roots coming out from the rockwool cube and she stretched to almost 7~8cm, but the leaves ar tiny. The Mazar does not stretched so much and she does not showed any roots out of the cuve, but the leaves are bigger.
I filed the tubes with 15L of RO water, and I added:
- 27ml Canna Aqua Vega A;
- 27ml Canna Aqua Veba B;
- 60ml Rhizotonic ;
The pH before nutes was 8.2 and the EC ~1uS. The temperature is 25.5C (77.9F) with light On and 23-24C (73-75F) during the "night".
After nutes, the pH stabilized to 6 and the EC was 999uS, just a few microSiemens lower than the estimated value.
Until now I am very pleased with this Canna Aqua nutrients and I like the fact that no pH adjustment was needed.
Each tub contain a small aquarium pump, connected to a mechanical timer switch, set to 15min ON and 45min OFF, which will provide water for the plants until they develop roots into the reservoir.
Also I fave a 2 outputs air pump which provide a lot of air, keeping the water on those tubs well oxygenated.
Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures, but this will be my first priority for tonight.
Because until yesterday the plants lived on a micro plastic greenhouse, without nutes, they seems under developed for their age, but I am sure they will recover very quick.
I had to remove the screens (and they will stay away until the training begin) to work easily with the tubs.
So now they can spread their roots in 15 liters of water. It seems the AK47 has a much faster metabolism, because she already has multiple roots coming out from the rockwool cube and she stretched to almost 7~8cm, but the leaves ar tiny. The Mazar does not stretched so much and she does not showed any roots out of the cuve, but the leaves are bigger.
I filed the tubes with 15L of RO water, and I added:
- 27ml Canna Aqua Vega A;
- 27ml Canna Aqua Veba B;
- 60ml Rhizotonic ;
The pH before nutes was 8.2 and the EC ~1uS. The temperature is 25.5C (77.9F) with light On and 23-24C (73-75F) during the "night".
After nutes, the pH stabilized to 6 and the EC was 999uS, just a few microSiemens lower than the estimated value.
Until now I am very pleased with this Canna Aqua nutrients and I like the fact that no pH adjustment was needed.
Each tub contain a small aquarium pump, connected to a mechanical timer switch, set to 15min ON and 45min OFF, which will provide water for the plants until they develop roots into the reservoir.
Also I fave a 2 outputs air pump which provide a lot of air, keeping the water on those tubs well oxygenated.
Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures, but this will be my first priority for tonight.
Last edited:
HEMP!!!!!!!!!!! Dude........you've built a silencer/suppressor for a tank!!!!!!! Ahahahahah
Could you not have used fibreglass insulation or do you not have that available to you? It works wonders for purposes such as that. Another thing, which is this case would have worked due to no fire risk, is cotton-balls....like the kind women use to remove make-up. Just throwing out suggestions if there is ever a next time you or someone else might need to make one....
No...wait...it looks more like a mortar suppressor now that I think about it..;D
Excellent work my friend...
Could you not have used fibreglass insulation or do you not have that available to you? It works wonders for purposes such as that. Another thing, which is this case would have worked due to no fire risk, is cotton-balls....like the kind women use to remove make-up. Just throwing out suggestions if there is ever a next time you or someone else might need to make one....
No...wait...it looks more like a mortar suppressor now that I think about it..;D
Excellent work my friend...
