Thanks a lot to EH, I am grateful to your efforts and hard work, this inspires me to have my own LED grow light designed and produced in China, and then hit the EU market. Here are some questions about my investment.What's up guys? Cool to see some of you stayed awake to see the new site launch.
I've been working on that site here and there for about a month, then spent the entire day since 4am yesterday morning on it, and even during commercials when The Walking Dead was on. Any other TWD fans out there?
Yeah, shipping to Canada is a little steep. We're looking for cheaper options, including renting warehouse space there and shipping locally (more than likely that's what we'll do, about 35% of all our sales is from our friends to the North).
As for plans for other sizes, well, none yet. We spent a long time designing that model, trying to get the most Umol'/s per cubic foot with the least amount of watts. And since we do use mostly white, it was a no-brainer to use Cree's. The XPE red Cree's are pretty decent too. We do only use the highest bins they have for both. We're testing the XTE's right now, and will also test some MKR's later this year, but those will be housed in the same 12" x 18" case if/when we change to them. We'll be with that housing case for a couple of years at least.
I could have built this light with low bin Epileds and sell them for $350 each and probably have even more watts, and still have the same profit margin. These are all about efficiency though. Watts are only a measurement of what the power they use, nothing to do with the power they put out.
In the amount of time it took to type this all out, a good chuck of our inventory is already gone! There's less than 15 remaining units guys not including units already spoken for, they're moving quick. We have another 150 units being made right now and should follow this first batch by about 10 days.
How many LED drivers in the panel, are there 3 LED drivers and each runs 24pcs LEDs in a series? So, if one LED burnt, will the other 23pcs continue working please?
I am trying to figure out the production cost of this panel:
Fans 5$, heat-sinks 5$, circuid board 5$, LED drivers 3x15$=45$, case 10$. LEDs 72x3$=216$, shipping cost from China to USA 30$ per unit, import tax 30$, the manufacturer charges 40$ per unit as a production profit, so the total cost 386$. Promotion sales at 500$-386$-15$(shipping cost to the end user)=99$(net). A bit low profit,probably there is a small margin at the LED chips if ordering at large orders.
With EPILEDs, LEDs cost 72x0.5=36$. Total cost should be 386-216+36=206. Selling at 350$ per unit, the profit is 129$ per unit.
OH, finally, as a grower, I have the most important question about it: Without the secondary lenses, what's the penetration and PAR reading at 20", normally, a 130-150W actual draw LED grow light without secondary lens outputs about 200umol at 20". But this area51 panel with cree chips, the PAR reading should be higher, I estimate 300umol at 20".