ikea shelve light

[acidtablockshifty]

after loosing a bid on ebay for a marineland light fixture for a lot of money i gave up and built my own. just kind of an idea to aesthetically hold some ebay led flood light fixtures.

so the inside of the shelves are honey comb cradboard, there is some wood mdf i think two in the middle were there bracket rods hold the shelve two strips at the ends and one running down the back of the shelve that would sit against the wall. if you hit them it will be a pain, my lights laid out to miss them, but on dif. sized shelve dif. number of lights id could lay out right on them and make things impossible and or weaken the shelve a lot. I decided to rip out the cardboard near my holes and great stuff the inside, wich is a lot harder to get the great stuff to stay in then you would think, ideally you could build some type of false wall around the hole to help it fill in stronger but i didnt want to spend the time as i wasnt sure if this whole thing was going to work in the first place. i used a hole saw that we had it was so dull it would actually throw sparks of the plastic lol, but it was the onlly one i had that would fit the recessed light trims.

the image uplaoder stinks so multiple post write up, please dont comment there is alot more and id like it to be in a row, it is going to take a while the way this thing is going

 

[acidtablockshifty]

i used some foil tape to close in the holes just because i wasn't sure how humidity would affect slash maybe be absorbed by the interior cardboard structure, the recessed light trims were then trimmed to the exact depth of the bottom lets call it the trim shelve, the top shelve is used to hide the fixture both will sandwich a piece of plexiglass in the middle and the light will sit on the plexiglass.

^ the plexiglass picked up from a local plastics place who has scrap pieces from old projects they are very willing to help you and sell these scrap pieces, i asked them for blue they had this and it was perfect because it was very light so as not to affect color/spectrum to much, i am not sure how many pics i have of the rest of the assemling of the ficture itself. but the basics are i sandwiched the two pieces with the blue plexi between them, so the plexi had to be cut on the table saw to the exact demmension of the shelve,.....i sanded the edges smooth i would have flame polished them but at the time that was beyond my plexi skills/knowledge. before sandwiching them together with a pl400 type glue, i made sure to cut a small recesses on the back side of the plexiglass, about 3/4 inch in from the sides i took off about maybee a 1/4 or three eighths. with the thickness of the plexi i was able to run a cheep blue led strip light i got on ebay or amazon, ps after the fact i wouldnt buy a cheep one again as they seem to loose brightness over time probally just because they come with such a cheep ac/to dc porwer converter.


theres more hold on

 

[acidtablockshifty]

so if you had the ceiling hight you could stop there and figure out how to hang it, where my lights landed i would no longer be able to use the factory shelve mount as i cut right through it and the tank is going in the basement which has very low ceilings, so the lights were completely stripped down to basiclaly a shell/heatsink with led still in them, ballast were removed from the light totally, you can see in the last pic i used some screws along with the glue to hold it together at the ends and were ever else there was some solid wood inside the shelve,(still not very solid i had to use fender washers keep the screw from going right threw the shelves shell) also i would have clamped this thing really good if i did it again i just used some weights while the glue was setting up and things didnt compact together as much as i wanted, couple sheets of plywood on the outside of the whole thing and a ton of clamps would have been much better. You also have to be really careful with how much glue and were you put it to close to the edge and youll end up ruining the finish of the shelve.

more in a bit

 

[acidtablockshifty]

i used i think 6wire speaker wire solid 18awg copper, and cut a auto harness connector out of a junk yard car, i put these Chinese dimmers i ordered on ebay that took like a month and a half to get here. there is a thousand way you do this different this is just how i did it, you could get a bigger led driver and put all the lights on one but i figured i would just do it this way if a ballast fails i can just change it out.

the brackets i made two plates out the ikea wall bracket, welded three nuts to each, painted them with white refrigerator epoxy, drilled holes in the bottom of the fixture so the nuts counter sunk into the fixture, used 1/4 20 threaded rod pieces on the two outside nuts to further sandwich the fixture together, the middle nut is there for an eye hook to hang the fixture. After hanging it without doing a height check i had to redesign the way hung it. I have no pics of the hanging parts themselves, but with the eye hooks i could hang it with aircraft wire if had the height, right now the eye hooks slide on a steel rod so i can slide the fixture back to the wall to have access to the tank. I later took the fixture down and added five artic white leds as moon lighting for the tank, i just used the wire for the led strip light to power them. The led to the left ended up breaking because of heat after the ceiling was closed back up, i replaced it and added a small fan facing up between the cabinet and tank which cools the fins on the fixture, the others have enough air up top to to dissipate.

 

[acidtablockshifty]

some of the pics in the last post didnt work this is them, i dont how to edit a post yet so.

disclaimer: Electricity is dangerous, if you don't know what was done or how to do it by looking at the pictures you shouldn't be getting into this part of the project. Plug the lights in how they come, mount a power strip or something and plug them in.

 

[VelasCorals]

Very innovative! Great job!

 

[Arron209]

Looks very clean. Aesthetics achieved!

 

[Tabasco1]

That is a top notch DIY project. kudos.

 

[acidtablockshifty]

Thanks guys, it took a while to build lol, but lights for 6 ft tank are really expensive. It actually still cost a decent amount to build this, but after the led broke on that one light i found the leds and ballasts/converter for way cheap on ebay, and i only ended up using those and the heat sinks/ reflectors, which if you could find some kinda heat sink material mock something that way. The whole tank build was basically a budget build with budget being the lowest dollar amount possible, scored the tank for free( disgruntled landlord was going to smash it with a sledgehammer because she had no way of getting down three flights of stairs), conference room table was free, spent like 90 re laminating it, and built the stand for about 100, and got the sump tank for like 20