Corvette kidd
Active Member
After many weeks of research and lurking on forums i have come to the conclusion that someone needs to make a thread that details the parts used to make the led and where to buy them. So i am taking it upon myself to share my newbie knowledge of led making in hopes that more people will realize just how easy and cost effective building and growing with an led can be.
First off i will be talking about the 100+ watt chips i use and where to buy them. You can buy the good chips like cree and bridgelux off of a website called digi-key.com for around 28-40 bucks depending on the brand. if those chips end up being too much money for you then i recconend the lohas brand led's that you can buy off of amazon for around 9-10 dollars a piece. Remember to always run the led chips in question to at least 60% of their maximum wattage or less in order to make them run more efficiently and to increase their life span.
Next i will talk about drivers.
The first thing to remeber when choosing a driver to run your led(s) is to make sure that your drivers output voltage is equal to the total sum of the led(s) being driven, and the total wattage output of the driver should be equal to at least half of the max wattage of the led(s) in question.
To determin wattage of a driver if not specified, divide the amps by volts to gett watts. the mean well hlg-185h-c1400b driver is 143v and 1.4 amps, so if we do the math: 143volts x 1.4amps= 200.2 watts.
Now with the mean well hlg-185h-c1400b driver, we can run 4 of the cheap lohas led chips from amazon or we can run 3 of the bridgelux vero29's per driver when wired in series. I personally order these off of ebay whenever i can find them for a good price, or i will order them off of mouser.com
Last is the heatsink. I honestly have no idea what size heatsink you need per led chip (hopefully someone else will chime in with those specifics) but i usually just make them so big that im certain its over kill, i usually buy my heatsinks from avidthermology.com or heatsinkusa.com and the size heatsinks i use are 2ft long, 4inch wide, and 2 inches thick. I can fit 3-vero29's or 4-lohas 100w chips and one driver on each heatsink. And because i tend to ghetto rig everything i usually use large box fans instead of pc fans to cool the light fixtures (i actually just dont know how to power those yet haha, but hopefully someone can comment on how to wire up pc fans to a light fixture)
Anyone who has more knowledge than me please chime in and add some more info. Happy growing and stay frosty
First off i will be talking about the 100+ watt chips i use and where to buy them. You can buy the good chips like cree and bridgelux off of a website called digi-key.com for around 28-40 bucks depending on the brand. if those chips end up being too much money for you then i recconend the lohas brand led's that you can buy off of amazon for around 9-10 dollars a piece. Remember to always run the led chips in question to at least 60% of their maximum wattage or less in order to make them run more efficiently and to increase their life span.
Next i will talk about drivers.
The first thing to remeber when choosing a driver to run your led(s) is to make sure that your drivers output voltage is equal to the total sum of the led(s) being driven, and the total wattage output of the driver should be equal to at least half of the max wattage of the led(s) in question.
To determin wattage of a driver if not specified, divide the amps by volts to gett watts. the mean well hlg-185h-c1400b driver is 143v and 1.4 amps, so if we do the math: 143volts x 1.4amps= 200.2 watts.
Now with the mean well hlg-185h-c1400b driver, we can run 4 of the cheap lohas led chips from amazon or we can run 3 of the bridgelux vero29's per driver when wired in series. I personally order these off of ebay whenever i can find them for a good price, or i will order them off of mouser.com
Last is the heatsink. I honestly have no idea what size heatsink you need per led chip (hopefully someone else will chime in with those specifics) but i usually just make them so big that im certain its over kill, i usually buy my heatsinks from avidthermology.com or heatsinkusa.com and the size heatsinks i use are 2ft long, 4inch wide, and 2 inches thick. I can fit 3-vero29's or 4-lohas 100w chips and one driver on each heatsink. And because i tend to ghetto rig everything i usually use large box fans instead of pc fans to cool the light fixtures (i actually just dont know how to power those yet haha, but hopefully someone can comment on how to wire up pc fans to a light fixture)
Anyone who has more knowledge than me please chime in and add some more info. Happy growing and stay frosty
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