Lighting Building out my COB LED for the closet

[Ozone69]

Pulled the trigger last week on ordering the pieces parts to build out a new light for the closet. Got most of the basic mechanical build out done today, so figured it was a good time to start documenting a little for anyone that might want to check out the build.

Key Parts:

4x Cree CXB 3590 3500K CD 36V COB
4x PLC 140mm Anodized Pin Heatsink
4x Ideal Chip lok holder and reflector adapters
4x Ledil Angelina Reflectors
LSD Power 200w Driver 1.4amp/145v

Total on parts and shipping for everything came to around $375

Using a standard piece of EMT conduit to hang everything. Eventually I may try and cable it up to allow for lowering each light individually, but going back and forth on if I really want to do that. For now just need to get it up and running. I'm planning on running four plants at a time in the closet, so have spaced the lights across the bar to essentially give me one lamp per plant once everything's in place.

I drilled three 1/8" holes through the heat sinks at equal points around the edge, and I'm using 1/16" cable and ferrules to hang 'em. Going to be a fairly "duct tape and bailing wire" type build compared to some of the more slick build out's around the 'Net, but then I don't really need it to look pretty.

Hoping to get going on the electrical and get it cabled up and ready to start mounting the COB's tomorrow.

 

[Atulip]

Very cool. Love the adjustable design. I'm going with 2 cobs per light for the same reason, adjustability. My canopy management is poor though lol

I don't know if you heard from plc yet but there's a problem with dimming in this batch of drivers so they're only running at full power. So no need to wire up a pot of you haven't yet.

Dimming issue update:
I talked with LSD and they are taking care of issue and will replace all the drivers and covering all the cost. The issue seems to be with the programming of the dimming chips and/or the integration with the rest of the driver. They are going to be rebuilding the whole dimming circuits and programming from the ground up.
The timeline is ~30 days unfortunately. I am truly sorry for this issue. I know that everyone who bought them, did it on my recommendation and I am sorry we didn't catch this sooner. We are working our hardest to push for sooner and will ship things out as the are ready.
Do not worry about returning the drivers you have. I hope you can find a use for them somewhere. We will keep everyone notified on the progress and any changes via the email they used with their orders, and announcements here.

 

[Ozone69]

I emailed them when it showed up with the dimming lead since the datasheet shows this model to not have dimming. I was really looking to verify if it works or not since the datasheet says no dimming, which in a way it doesn't because of the issues with the chips. But yea...they said the same you are, that there is an issue with the programming, and they are expecting replacements with the dimming function corrected toward the end of the month. I should be on the list for it, so I'll have to decide if I want to use it once it shows up. I'm using terminal connectors in my wiring, so wouldn't be overly difficult to replace. Might just put a switch with a 50-60k Ohm or so resistor on the lead at that time as a "veg/bloom" switch instead of playing with a pot.

More progress...should just be some connecting up, tiding up, and powering up to test left to do at this point. Might get motivated and try and wrap it up tonight. Dog's getting moody about the lack of his sleeping lap this evening with me working, though. :smoking:

 

[Ozone69]

Wiring all done...



And Ozone said "let there be light..."

According to the Kill-A-Watt meter, it's actually pulling about 220 watts. Close enough that I'm not going to fret that it's not metering a dead nuts 200 watts.

Thanks to all AFN'ers and all the LED enthusiasts around the site!!! If not for all the info and examples of others builds this likely would not have happened.

 

[Ozone69]

Sooooooo....is there any real point in using my side lighting T5's when they make no visible difference on or off anymore with this baby in there. Feels like pouring a cup of water into the swimming pool to top it off.

 

[Ozone69]

Doing some temp testing in the closet today. Everything running well, but they do put off a fair bit of heat. Not bad at all for the wattage, I'd say. The room is running about 76F right now, on the tail end of a hot summer day. I'm reading about 10 degrees higher in the closet about 6" lower than the lights, and about 5 degrees higher than the room outside at what would be canopy level, so around 80F. Little warm, but I can live with it for being summer. Thinking for sure that I'll want to not run the T5 side lights, though, as they actually may put out more heat than these do, and don't know that I need their light with these running. Probably run without them to baseline for summer, then maybe turn them on if temps allow next grow when it'll be cooler for fall/winter and temps may allow for it.

Here's some IR thermometer gun shots on the heat sinks and the driver:

 

[Ozone69]

Needed to pull it out of the closet for some other work (trying to fortify the seal around the door a little), so thought I'd take the opportunity to get a picture of the full lamp...

Also wanted to give my summation of the build project, so here it goes:

Really a lot easier to build out than I thought it would be. Most difficult part was deciding how to mount or hang the heat sinks to best work with my space. Once I decided on hanging them, and got the right tool (drill press) to make the holes, it all went really easy. The pre-drilled and tapped M3 screw holes on the heat sinks from PLC made putting the holders on the heat sinks a breeze. I forgot to mention it in the original parts list, but I also ordered four of their thermal pads for the 3590's along with the rest of the parts. So assembling the COB "lamp" assemblies was just this easy:

Verify screw holes for the chip holder (need the ones where other holes line up with blank spaces for the reflector holders...pretty intuitive once you start looking at how the pre-drilled holes line up)
Start two screws in the appropriate holes
Snap COB into the holder
Peel backing off one side of thermal pad and stick onto COB
Peel the backing off the other side of the thermal pad
Slide holder over the screws, twist to lock in place and tighten the screws down to hold
Put two more screws in the screw holes through the reflector holder
Install reflector holder by lining up with screw holes in the heat sink and tightening
Strip about 1/2 inch of wire x2 (I recommend using two different color wires to help keep track of +/- but that's optional)
Slide into wire holder on the chip lock until it locks in place x2
Slide reflector onto holder and twist to lock in place

That's it for putting the actual lamp part of it together. Everything else is just making sure you wire 'em up in serial correctly with the power supply and figuring out how your going to mount/hang it all. This build was actually one of those that was easy to the point that I kept waiting for "the other shoe to drop" and something to go really wrong. Hence the fire extinguisher on hand for the big plugging in that's visible in other photos.

Light it puts out is impressive. Too blinding to look directly at the COB's themselves when lit. Though granted using the human eye in general and my middle aged eyes in particular is hardly a scientific measure. But still, whatever problems my next round of plants in the closet has, I don't think lack of light will be one of them. :smoking:

 

[Ozone69]

Ok...one more post about it and then I'll shuddap already. :smoking:

Wanted to throw up a quick blurb to document how I did the wiring on this. Figured I'd try to be thorough with the documentation in case someone looking to build their own stumbles in here someday looking for info. Also in case I need to repair it down the road I might need a little reference to what I did myself. What with that darn stoner memory loss and all.

I used fully insulated, crimp on spade terminal style connectors to hook every thing up along with some 18 gauge wire. Easy connectors to work with. Just strip 1/4-1/2 inch of wire, slide into the terminal, and crimp.

Here's my rough wiring diagram scribble that I worked off of:

And here's how I made it all work easy peasy:

I used short red and blue lead wires coming off each of the COB's that were the same color as the connectors (you can spot them in the picture in post #3 above) then used a neutral white wire for each of the jumper cables. Colors are personal choice. Could easily do the whole thing using one color wire to save from buying three spools for three colors if you really wanted. Just remember you may have to take it apart to troubleshoot a problem some day and the more intuitive you make things the easier it'll be to remember what you did.

Connect a red male connector to the positive lead on the driver, connect a blue male to the negative.
Connect a red male connector to the negative wire off each COB, connect a blue male to each positive.
Make five jumper wires. Each wire should have a blue female connector on one end and a red female connector on the other.

Provided you've done all that, it's then just a matter of connecting up a red jumper wire to the red lead off the driver, then the blue end of the jumper wire to a blue lead on a COB. Red lead off the other side of the COB to red connector on the next jumper wire which will then connect up to the blue connector on the next COB. Continue across all four COB and the last one should connect to the last jumper wire leaving a blue connector to complete the loop back to the driver.

NOTE: Just in case some super electrician type may come along at some point and tell me how wrong I am for using a blue connector for negative on one component (driver) and then using the same color for positive on something else (COB). I wasn't trying to be "by the book", if there even is a book for this sort of thing. I was trying to make it dummy proof where easy jumpers with one color connector on each end just get plugged in to color matching stuff to make it super intuitive. :smoking:

Anyhow...hope all this maybe helps someone else light their grow some day down the road and it's not just me babbling into cyberspace. But however y'all end up doing it, happy growing!!!!!!

 

[Atulip]

Helluva lot better than my wiring.

 

[virginia gent]

Redneck engineering, I love it. Thanks, this is going to be very helpful.