60" DIY Cree LED Fixture (480watts) - Build Thread

This is my build thread (from a different forum) that is still ongoing but I'd figure I'd come share the goods 8) I will post as much as I can but please feel free to comment in between posts ;D

Today (June 5th, 2013) I got my order in and need to say I'm really impressed! Over all this build has cost more than I'd like to admit but I can't wait to get started on this.

I still about a month away from putting this together as I'm waiting for my new Hakko FX888D soldering station Click here to enlarge Super stoked to get that in. Also I still need to order the dimming supplies and other parts. Hopefully by the end of the month I'll have the fixture itself complete and the dimmer supplies to come in shortly after.

I'm building a control panel for the option of fine tuning and manually dimming the LEDs (if I chose too) but I'll be using a Apex for controlling the system.

Here is the design I made in google sketchup

The build part list:

 

Well I got some time in on the fixture, I managed to mark out the heatsinks where I need to drill and tap and my soldering station came in so I was able to tin the LED's. By far the easiest thing ever when you got the right tools, it took me 45 mins tops to tin every lead on the LED's Click here to enlarge Definitely not as bad as I thought was going to be.

I'm just waiting on the screws, nylon washers and taps to come in then I can start to drill and tap the heatsinks and install the LED's in there final resting spot.

Thanks for looking 8)

 

I meant to toss these close up's but missed them I guess. I swear by this new soldering station I picked up, I mean I'm no pro and the most soldering I've done is underneath a car dash. And if luck would have it, I couldn't find my 0.5mm solder for the life of me, so I was stuck using 1.5mm which is more prone to flooding the lead or simply using too much solder. With a new tip it was a breeze even though I messed up the calibration (without even knowing at first... ) but I found a trick to do a rough calibration with just using solder that brang it back where it needed to be.

Oh and I got the call my taps are in, along with the screws and nylon washers Click here to enlarge Hopefully I can run down and pick them up today.

Enjoy the close ups 8)

 

Well who was I kidding I ran into that store faster than you could say DIY

I must admit I was shaking at first not wanting to slip with the drill bit or break one. Not even 4 holes in I break my bit... luckily I had another one kicking around and I made sure to wet it with some WD-40 after every hole I made. Needless to say by the time I finished drilling one heatsink my arm was ready to fall off. Lol Then came the tapping... Turns out it ain't so bad. (pun intended ;D ) After the first couple holes I was a tapping rock star

Took 3 bloody hours to do this one heatsink... but tomorrow is another day. Hopefully i'll find time to finish up both of them. (BTW this killed my 12v drill batteries in the end LOL)

 

Well today turned out pretty good, managed to get the other two heatsinks drilled and tapped and the LEDs mounted ;D Plus even managed to tin the wire.


Finally the last one... Haha never again without a drill press I swear!!!


The easy way to quickly measure wire when you are in need of multiples.


The mock up for measuring wire length


All cut ready to be striped and tinned


Stripped and ready to be tinned


My kitchen table work station Click here to enlarge Found out quite quickly using some flux on the tips works much more smoothly and made the process easier.


All tinned ;D




Yay!! Mounted and ready for wire!! ;D Super stoked!






Found using an iPhone pry tool works great to lift the nylon washers as you put the LEDs into place. Couldn't believe I have a entire tube of thermal paste left over, one tube was suppose to do 50 or so LED's and I've done enough CPU's to know how much is enough. Meh, can always use it for other things.
Overall I'm pretty happy about how things are going with the project. Stay tuned as hopefully this weekend I'll have some light ;D

 

Quite the undertaking there! A lot of work already put in to it; yet a lot more still to go!

Before you get too far, curious on your LED selection. Are you going to be adding any UV (really TV), cyan, or deep red? Also the number of royal blues may not be enough (usually you want to be 2:1 blue:white).

Edit: Sorry, I wrote this before I saw your last post...

 

Yup this is basically complete now but I'm retrofitting a 72" MH Coralife fixture so I can use the CMF sockets for actinic bulbs ;D this was originally for a FW setup but changed my plans so this will work out to over 800watts for a 6 foot tank lol

 

So I have good and bad news, bad news: I had probably 20+ shorts from the wire resting against the LED star itself which cause all sorts of problems. At first I started to pry the wire just a wee bit up from the star but I ended up breaking two terminals on the stars (very thankful there is two) so fixed those up and after 3 hours of digging through the leads I fixed all the shorts and man I swear I'm blinded when I started testing the strings with my LPC-60-1050, all I see is stripes and dots in my vision now :laughing0 SO the good news is that everything works ;D WAYYY brighter than I thought it would ever be. Lol I lit up the Royal Blues and the entire room filled with blue

I'm definitely glad I checked for shorts in the LEDs before I plugged anything in. Basically what I did was take my auto-range multimeter and set it to ohms/continuity, then grounded the "com/negative" on the heatsink (bare aluminum) and proceeded to test every terminal, when I heard a beep or any sign of continuity I checked out the wire and found the shorts that way. This works great for pre-testing.

Well I'm wrapping it up tonight, LOL past my bedtime! And all I see is wire when I close my eyes and those dots are driving me nuts. I'll update tomorrow evening with some photos possibly a video of some light 8)

 

After sleeping on how the LEDs were shorting out everywhere I decided to re-think how I soldered the wire to the LEDs. So you guessed it I de-soldered every wire and changed it up so the wire was on the face instead of the edge of the star.

Here is how I first wired it up... Not good!


Then here is the after with the lenses and amber strip installed.


My brackets I made from a piece of 1/8" x 1" x 36" aluminum and some 8-32 screws from home depot


The Masterpiece! 8)




This is only one channel of blue LEDs, it was so blue my camera couldn't handle it

 

Well small update, I made the cables that will connect the fixture to the control box. There are not really necessary but I figured it would be a nice touch