Hacking the Water Cooled Rig
I was down feeding the girls and hacking the lamp a typical day for a retired old fart who grows, has a shop and likes to have fun, there's more than one who hangs around here that has a shop and likes to play. I started getting into this stuff after retirement and had some experience from my "misspent youth", back in the stone age, did I tell ya we used to grow by gaslight then and all the talk was about the best mantle to use, some gave a better spectrum than most
Gotta stop for some cat kiss'n here cause they insist. If you think yer on a typical thread here, yer not, cause it has purposes greater than my own alone, kinda like
|GroErr Grows| in that respect. Who we are leaks through in everything we do and I ain't no different than everybody else. One of this thread's purposes is to show folks that we ain't any different than any other honorable and decent people, we just like to get high, want some? In the future other Canadians are going to hear a lot more from us, and like I said before, I don't want folks to think we're a bunch of heathen! (though technically I am)
Enough politic'n, time for some fun and why I started the damn thing in the first place, though the reason has changed somewhat, as I too learned and grew. Ya learn till yer dead, or ya might as well be..
OK, I got this sonofabitch on the bench for an upgrade and tune up, the reason some aspects of it look like shit is because it's largely experimental and was designed to till fresh ground. I knew I'd be upgrading the COBs and doing other changes which is why the wiring looks like shit, I show it more as a horrible warning than as an example to emulate. If ya wanna build with water I got a better design than this Gen 1, I'm already onto Gen2 light bars, but this works well enough, I'm just too fuck'n lazy to upgrade the bars and I'm too tight to buy cob holders
I'm pull'n the COBs off the pig and removed the double sided adhesive CPU/LED thermal tape. I could have used a quality thermal epoxy, but you'd have to chisel them off and it would ruin yer whole day. I also could have used COB holders and used good paste/pads and epoxied them on using a couple of dabs with a little weight on the holder till it sets. Im mostly explaining this so you'll understand what a tight old bastard I am!
When I pulled the flood light LEDs, though I call'm COBs now and thermal tape, this is what I found, the experimenting and fun continues...
I pulled the COBs and laid out the tape next to it to show you folks the things I'm looking at. The center top piece of tape seems to have lifted some of the plating clear off the copper back of the floodlight COB. Note the the metal on the tape, below is another piece of tape from another COB that has thermally discolored as a result of I think adhesion issues with the aluminum cooling tube. More care will have to be take'n in applying them and applying more pressure and though I'm reluctant to do it, when it comes to the citizens I'm gonna press the LES fur sure, as gently and firmly as I figure I can get away with (sure hope Cobby ain't watching
) This time I'll be collecting data and probably go'n blind do'n it, the things I do fur science!
Now I'm the first to admit that sometimes I live dangerously, but on this I figured I could take my chances, because I built a small experimental lamp to get some hands on, gain experience and collect data. Along the way I shattered some assumptions and brainwashed myself somewhat, but fur a hands on Canadian with a brain in his fuck'n head who grows with COBs this is worth a look into. There are other approaches that work better than this and Gen 2 bars would be best, so would COB holders and good paste/pads. If you use thermal tape yer cobs won't fall off fur sure, but it is not recommended for air cooled fixtures or water cooled ones and the faint of heart.
Now if yer a masochist like me and would like to "play" around with water cooling, here are a few cheap useful items fur collecting data. My "K" type DMM thermoprobe fugged up, so I ordered up a dirt cheap one with a couple of extra thermocouples. This kinda screwed things up and I couldn't take any measurements or I woulda figured on this thing earlier, from the data, not the tear down, best laid plans of men and...
The other two items are a infrared thermometer and a LUX meter and it's plenty accurate with white light for my purposes, only fanatics have PAR meters for small grows with white COBs, they might be nerds like me, or simply getting carried away or have more money than brains...
If ya want accurate infrared readings spray paint shiny surfaces flat black, or cover in black tape and wait for thermal equilibrium to be established before measuring.
If you'd like to find out more about this subject go to my thread, my mistakes and fuckups are there too, along with a bit of data, ideas and designs.
For a Canadian doing something like this makes sense, cause if ya use Gen 2 bars, it'll end up cheaper and better than air, provided yer the creative kind who likes to have a bit of fun. You can recover most of the energy from the lamps and easily put it where you want in the house, yer carbon filter will run at a whisper intermittently, or not at all. You can easily and cheaply CO2 supplement and if you use a big enough dehumidifier, seal the room, though that would be extreme. Even good quality COBs will run better and brighter if you can keep the Tb down, though don't count on getting too great an improvement in performance. Gen 6 Citizens can go to 130 C before fry'n, so ya can boil water with em, though I wouldn't recommend it. Your COBs will run cold, fuck'n near forever with little diminishment and if you use holders and paste they out live ya by a long stretch, sure'n shit. Water cooling literally sucks the heat outta COBs and the thermal differential you can maintain is in a league of it's own, so ya can get away with a lot. Give yer COBs some cold comfort and one day yer descendants might say," My great granddaddy used to use these COBs to grow pot in the war on reality!". Yer COBs could be passed down the generations like family jewels. There's no brazing or welding involved with building the bars, real simple with the GEN2's.Got ya sold yet?
If the above don't get ya maybe this will, yer garden becomes quiet and peaceful and a good place to meditate when ya got yer chores done and ya ain't too stoned...
https://www.rollitup.org/t/economical-multi-led-chip-projects-for-growing.852256/page-8