diy led

I would guess everyone's using the fins for a reason. The AI's have fins and a fan. The fan does run, even though you can't hear it.

 

Without fins you would severely cut down on the surface area exposed to the air used to do the actual cooling. Without the fins I would think it would almost be pointless.

 

Yep defintally use fins. I know there is a couple people that have DIY led fixtures. I have one and Andy is almost done with his, I bought mine, but am getting ready to build a bigger one here in a week or so.

 

There's a crapload of heatsinks on ebay for decent prices.

 

www.heatsinkusa.com is where I bought mine.  Good prices and any size needed.

 

Posted By Matt on 10/10/2010 09:22 PM
Yep defintally use fins. I know there is a couple people that have DIY led fixtures. I have one and Andy is almost done with his, I bought mine, but am getting ready to build a bigger one here in a week or so.
Matt,  Are you going to do a build thread on this?  I'd love to see it, especially since you're the one doing all the work! lol

 

Yea most likely I will be doing all the work this time. The last time I bought mine already assembled, but this time I am going to build a bigger model, so right now I just need to order about 5-6 more Leds, and then I should be ready to start build, which I hope will take only a day.

 

I've been trying to reed on RC about this for a while and my head's starting to hurt. Does anyone have good links, or any summarizing what it would take to build an LED fixture? I wanted to give building a 24" x 18" a try. I've got a 125 gallon tank(6' x 18" x 24"), so I wanted to build one fixture to see if I like it. If it works out alright, I can either use that one fixture on a frag tank, or use it as one of the three fixtures I'll need.

Matt, if you do a build thread, please let us know!

 

With LEDs its all about cooling. Even though most LEDs are stated to run at normal operation upwards to 120 degrees celsius, this cuts down on the life of the LED by a lot. Having said that, most people that make DIY lights spend way too much time worrying about the heatsink and mounting the LEDs to it. If you are using a good quality heatsink, there is no need for thermal paste or epoxy or anything of that sort. The LED just needs to be very secure against the heatsink.

 

Yea on mine I don't plan on doing any epoxy or paste on mine. Just going to pre drill the holes then use stainless machine screws.