LED salvaging from 165w blackbox?

[Agennello1123]

I was wondering if it is possible to rip apart one of those Chinese 165w black box and salvage only the blue LEDs and build them into a bar light. I have a decent understanding of electronics and can solder, just looking for someone who has done something similar or could point me towards a website or forum that could help. I have access to a bunch of these cheap Blackbox leds but hate how bulky and ugly they are and would only use the blues anyways. I'd like to set them up with an external power supply to keep them very compact. Anyways any info helps. Thanks in advance.

 

[Timfish]

Depends on the LED design. If they're sruface mounted it can be done but specialized equipment is needed to unsolder them. There are LED which have little solder "ears" or tabs sticking out on the sides and those can be unsoldered with a conventional soldering iron and solder sucker. Much easier to just use the driver and maybe the heatsink and buy LEDs online. (Search for LED stars or LED COB)

Here's a link to my DIY 3500 PAR Cannon light. You should be able to easily adapt the electronics to any heatsink you want to use.

3500 PAR DIY LED Cannon

These are instruction for a DIY cannon I designed after having to come up with a lighting solution for this system that required recessed lighting in a balcony ceiling over 5' above the tank. Dana Riddle evaluated the cannon for spectrum, wattage and PAR and his results are in the xlsx file...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[oreo54]

I was wondering if it is possible to rip apart one of those Chinese 165w black box and salvage only the blue LEDs and build them into a bar light. I have a decent understanding of electronics and can solder, just looking for someone who has done something similar or could point me towards a website or forum that could help. I have access to a bunch of these cheap Blackbox leds but hate how bulky and ugly they are and would only use the blues anyways. I'd like to set them up with an external power supply to keep them very compact. Anyways any info helps. Thanks in advance.

Unless you use like an electric fry pan to remove them most of the time they break trying to take one off at a time.
At like 10 diodes for $1 on AliExpress removing though noble is kind of err wasteful in terms of time/ energy.
Next unlike getting new diodes already on starboard you are working with the bare diodes
Unless you buy starboard and attach them ( more labor/ cost) you would need to thermal epoxy ( or thermal rtv) the " eggs" right to a heatsink and bend the contacts up. If not careful you will break the plastic/ ceramic ( not sure exactly what they are made of) die holder.
Or at another cost you can buy linear led circuit boards made for the loose diodes.

To suppliment any new expenses you could modify the old boards with more blues ( removing some whites) that you would buy for your new strips and then sell them.

In other words build new bars and " fix" old boards to be more functional.
And you would actually get paid for doing it.
Unfortunately you might only net like $10/ board.

 

[caddnima_reef]

I know this is an old post. But maybe my build can help inspire you?

caddnima - DIY Led - Linear Design v2

INTRODUCTION Date: April 2021 Eleven years later, I keep going back to this style of design. I really like the "linear" or commonly call "bar" type of lights. You can simply add or remove or change any of the bars without bringing the whole light rig down. Very similar to the T5 where the user

sites.google.com

 

[oreo54]

I know this is an old post. But maybe my build can help inspire you?

caddnima - DIY Led - Linear Design v2

INTRODUCTION Date: April 2021 Eleven years later, I keep going back to this style of design. I really like the "linear" or commonly call "bar" type of lights. You can simply add or remove or change any of the bars without bringing the whole light rig down. Very similar to the T5 where the user

sites.google.com

Thanks. As a side note many end up breaking the led on removal.
Seems some are soldered in the center slug, some just thermal compound.

The " twist off" method is the most fatal.

Consider this an asterisk.
Nice writeup though.

 

[caddnima_reef]

Thanks Oreo54