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The Groffice

Palindrome

King of Schwag
A minor update and sorry I haven't been more active, but been slacking off for a while (most of the winter I guess)

Anyway I changed up the fan's in the cabinets, as they didn't really work very well at blowing air across the canopy. They just make a vortes around themself, use a lot of energy and was a massive waste of money LOL

They looked cool!

So I swapped them out with small 90x90m PC fans, that I picked up from Ebay for much much less then the big radiator fans.
They look the part as well, but hey if they will do the job I won't judge their looks.





Starting out with 4 in each cabinet, seems to give a good airflow around the plants.
Had plans on doing 5 in each cab, but the PSU or dimmer seems to struggle with running 10 fans at once. I think it's the dimmer, as it's a 2x 80 Watt 12V PSU
I might have to set it up with indevidual dimmers for each cabinet, the I would have prefered all 3 tires just run 100% the same.
 

MoS

Member
Looking good mate.

Any chance of a simple guide for me to use for making those lights myself, eg. a drawing or some schematics.

Have looked the 17 pages through, and cant seem to find any, would be grand mate.

Perhaps also links to the parts required eg.

Have a good day...
 

Palindrome

King of Schwag
Looking good mate.

Any chance of a simple guide for me to use for making those lights myself, eg. a drawing or some schematics.

Have looked the 17 pages through, and cant seem to find any, would be grand mate.

Perhaps also links to the parts required eg.

Have a good day...

Hello my friend, long time, hope everything is good.

Unfortunet the TCI strips I used, are no longer in production and I apparently got the last ones. On the other hand, much better chips are out. I just have to find the link, I don't have it here atm.

I'll get back to you, maybe send me a PM with your plans.

Cheers
 

MoS

Member
Reply

Reply

Cheers mate.

Led´s are the future no doubt, still I have many different sizes of HPS lamps through the years, will use them this time around

A link/email eg. would be grand.

FYI, the issue you mention in relation to light leaks from the doors of the cabinets, I had the same issue many years ago.

There are 2 easy way to get rid of this, one cheap and cheerfull is to use black bins bags taped to the cabinets inside frame so the doors press up to them, but most often you have to use a latch to secure the doors when closed.

Another approach is to use a window profile list, have added a picture.

A bit hard to explain, but goes as follows; you make a frame behind the cabinets opening eg. 4 inches, 2 inches attached to the cabinet frame, 2 inches are visible. On these 2 inches visible you add the window profile list, has sticky tape on it. Thereby you dont need a latch and the light leak issue is ressolved, see my dandy drawing.



All the best and have a good day...
 

MoS

Member
Mkay mate, will have a look.

I need DIY lights that are plug and play hence I dont want to solder and other related items in that fashion.

50 posts and PM is possible :cool:

Have a good day although rainy here...
 

Dandelo

Member
question for you palindrome, moreso food for thought;

how can you tell if diodes start to decline and is it possible to replace them individually or easier to replace the entire strip? probably applies less to your setup since you built your LEDs but the ones being sold for $1-2k makes me wonder how can the consumer know when these diodes are starting to decline and how to deal with diode warranty issues. DIY might be the way to go but then they become untested and unwarrantied builds.
 

exploziv

pure dynamite
Administrator
Veteran
It is easier to replace whole strip, and if they are at least of fair quality and driven at the right voltage/current they shouldn't burn out in years.
Also, if you research enaugh to diy something right, in 90% of the cases you end up with something that is of better quality than storebought ones and easier to repair.
I repaired storebought ones and i built some of mine too. The ones I made I just had to rebuild when newer tech came on and I wanted better lights. The storebought were crap and way too expensive for what it was inside. I had to replace both diodes and drivers on them over the years. I just ended up retrofitting them with my own diy build to be able to use the case and heatsink. So don't start with the midset that diy is bad. Most of the time the opposite is true. And if you buy good quality premade lights they will bw good but you overpaid by at least 3-4 times on them and still get lower quality components than what you can get if you diy it. If you are able to diy, don't be afraid to do it. Even if not sure what to do I bet there are a lot of diy builds presented on the forum and internet that you can learn to do it fairly easy.
 

Palindrome

King of Schwag
question for you palindrome, moreso food for thought;

how can you tell if diodes start to decline and is it possible to replace them individually or easier to replace the entire strip? probably applies less to your setup since you built your LEDs but the ones being sold for $1-2k makes me wonder how can the consumer know when these diodes are starting to decline and how to deal with diode warranty issues. DIY might be the way to go but then they become untested and unwarrantied builds.


Yeah I would just swap the strip, rather then dealing with soldering new chips in. I payed 10$ per strip (now they are out of production), but I got some spare strips in backup.

You could change the diode chips, if they burn out but I don't think it would be cost effective.
Not sure how you see if your lights decline, so far I have only experianced chips burn out on the cheap strips where I removed the resistors protecting the chips. To get maximum effect, but it's better just to buy the strips without resistors.

Digikey sell some cheap stips, that works great for DIY.
Look up Bridgelux - BXEB-L0560Z-50E2000-C-B3
 
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