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Roughly $1000 and unknown hours on my DIY fixture.
43"x 15"x3" (40x10 heatsink), 216w, Active Cooling, Fully Dimmable across 4 channels. All drivers are internal, Fan power supply internal, single power cord to fixture, 2 CAT5e cords for dimming via the Apex.
Well done!
Heatsinks are a serious backbone for any quality fixture. Is that HeatsinkUSA heatsink?
Given the surface area and mass of the heatsink and the airflow, you are getting better efficiency / PAR per watt than most factory fixtures...
With the fixture that close what optics / reflectors are you using or did you choose to go with a LED without optics?
Bill
I'm looking at cables now for something with 8 pins, that can handle up to 54v @ 2A, per cable.
Heatsink is from Heatsink USA, no optics (ranging from 105-120degree light spread, which you can see in the first image where I do get a lot of spill. It's almost a rainbow on the walls near the tank). I recently raised the fixture to roughly 8" above the tank and haven't had time to recheck the par values. I was about 5" previously, and I was getting ~200 par on the sandbed, and up to 400par, roughly 1" below the surface. (I was also getting a lot of splash from the water surface, and that was more reason to raise it up).
I've been playing around with the Cool White LED's recently, since I did not like the original hue of the tank. The cool whites I was running would overpower the blue/RB leds and tinge the tank yellow, even at a 2:1 ratio. YACK!
I'm a 14k Pheonix type of guy (T5's would be 4 Blue+, 1 Purple+ and 1 GE6500k in the previous 6 bulb fixture). I like that hue, maybe just a little bluer towards 15-16k and it would be perfect (the first image is when the whites were ramping down, so it's too blue for my liking there). Changing out the leds is an easy task, as it only takes 5 minutes to disassemble the fixture, and roughly 20-30 mins to solder in and glue the new leds to the heatsink. Being easy to disassemble is also nice so I can blow out any dust that accumulates in there and clean the shields when needed.
My only 2 compliants:
The fans. While they do a great job at keeping everything nice and cool (air coming out of the exhaust side fans is only 2 degrees warmer than going in), they are a little loud, if you consider 28dBA loud (there's 4 pushing and 4 pulling, 8 in total). I'm going to swap them out for some SilentX Ixtrema's (16dBA)the next time I have it apart. The rest of my system is dead silent with the exception of the skimmer with is barely noticable, and these fans are driving me mad.
The weight of the fixture. Being that everything is internal, this fixture weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 30lbs (I've never actually weighed it). Obviously, the heatsink is the bulk of that, but I could probably shave off 5 pounds easily by not having all 6 drivers and fan power supplies internal. The next one I build (for a friend) will have a remote driver/power supply box, again with minimal cords running to the fixture. I'm looking at cables now for something with 8 pins, that can handle up to 54v @ 2A, per cable.
Very Nice! That's an impressive DIYRoughly $1000 and unknown hours on my DIY fixture.
43"x 15"x3" (40x10 heatsink), 216w, Active Cooling, Fully Dimmable across 4 channels. All drivers are internal, Fan power supply internal, single power cord to fixture, 2 CAT5e cords for dimming via the Apex.