LED Design

[giulianom]

Wired up one of the 455nm Royal Blue 50W LED chips.

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Used a dremel tool to carve out space in the bottom of the reflector for the wires and the solder patches.

The bottom is roughened up with sandpaper so that the silicone used to glue the reflector in place will hold...

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[giulianom]

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you... LIGHT!


Wired up the 3 x 50W 10,000K in parallel, and hooked it all up to the HLG-185H-36B driver.

Works like a charm!

Here it is at the lowest setting, or 10%:

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The 100K potentiometer works great, I can adjust the brightness pretty much anywhere from 10% up to 95-100%.

Here it is at full brightness:

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I'll be wiring up the 3 x 50W Royal Blue LEDs tomorrow.

 

[rdnelson]

I really like that "Iron" sand bed. Looking great man. When you going to build mine?????

 

[giulianom]

rdnelson99;753881 wrote: I really like that "Iron" sand bed. Looking great man. When you going to build mine?????

Yeah, it's about all the flat table space I have in my "office"...


I may have to start making a wait list...

 

[jbdreefs]

Looks great! I think my eyes hurt from the picture. I can't imagine what it looks like in person.

I want to go back (cough... read a novel) to see where you discussed picking the driver. I just replaced a driver. At the end of the day, I know I'm driving the leds at an acceptable amperage, but I sort of took a not-so-educated shot in the dark at picking a driver. If you didn't already post a discussion about this selection process, would you? Matching amperage with parellel circuits is tough, and I couldn't find/understand anything useful when i did my research.

 

[rdnelson]

While I am sure the point of this was more to do with saying "I designed and built these", I am curious how you think they compare cost wise with something you could have bought. I love building my own stuff when I can. Sometimes it is cheaper because I find stuff I can make work, other times, I think I pay more. LOL But in the long run, I love telling people "I built that". Even if it means nothing to them. Hehehehehe

 

[giulianom]

Yeah, it's still pretty blinding at 6' away at 100% power.

With parallel circuits, it's all about dividing the constant current by the number of LEDs. The voltage is less important, but as long as the output voltage is in the range of the driving voltage of the LED, it's fine.

For example, these 50W LEDs take 1.7A at 30-36V.

So my driver delivers 5.2 A at (up to) 36V - divide 5.2A by 3 x 50W LEDs, and then each 50W LED gets (up to) 1.7A at the necessary 30-36V.

 

[jbdreefs]

That's pretty much the math I used. But my setup is a little different (3 strings of 12 3w leds). I started with 2.28A and diveded by 3 to get 760ma which is close to perfect and I could adjust it down a bit...however, the multimeter says I'm getting something in the high 600's. I thought it was odd.. so i tested my other drivers and all specs were comparable.

Anyways, thanks for the info. Have you checked your current with a multimeter? I'm curious if you have similar results.

 

[jbadd99]

The last time I tried to do math for wiring up LEDs, I ended up banging my head against my kitchen counter repeatedly before I figured out how to wire up some DIY LED tail lights for my motorcycle before you could purchase them commercially.

Now that I'm contemplating a LED build, I'm doing it again (banging my head on the counter). So far, here's what I've come up with:

Using a Mean Well HLG-185-24A as the driver, I could wire-up a parallel series of 12 sets of 7 LEDs each, assuming a 3.3 foward voltage and a forward current of 700mA with 1.5 ohm resistors to cap it.

My problems:
1. I know not all of the LEDs will be driven 700mA
2. Not all of my LEDs will have the same forward voltage/current

What I'm trying to do:
Build a single controllable enclosure, using only two AC plugs, that generously light a 48"x24"x24" tank with various, but useful, colors.

Somebody check my math before I stroke out from looking at this stuff.