Being a canuck, I've been working on an idea for a high yield indoor garden & ordered myself a bunch of 50W LED grow lights for about 2.30$ a pop. I didn't want to spend on overpriced aluminum extrusion heat sinks & noisy fans so I figured I'd try a DIY water cooled fixture since I could use the heat to warm up the nutrient water. All the materials are leftovers I had laying around.
I used a copper sheet as mounting plates & made 2 manifolds our of 1/4" & 3/4" pipe, copper is a joke to solder but the next one will be aluminum.
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I made bus bars out of brass & 1/2" teflon to simplify the wiring. LEDs are 120v & .41 amps each.
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Then I mounted all that on an aluminum channel & a 1×2 tubing cut in 4 pieces. The fixture is roughly 20" x 94" with 16 LEDs.
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Let me tell you, this thing is fucking bright! Rough math makes it equivalent to 3300-4000W of incandescent grow lights. I figure it'll be good for at least a 3x8 area.
For now I'm using an aquarium pump in a bucket, I have to gauge how many fixtures I can run on a certain volume of water at a given flow while having good nutrient temps. The next fixtures will be smaller, I just had fun with this one.
chocolate 2 points 2.6 years ago
Nice work Canuck. Sexy manifold. I'm working on a similar project right now with only 3w LEDs for a custom lighting fixture to shine through pigmented epoxy voids in wood. Thankfully I can just use a couple inches of aluminum 1x1 angle as a heat sink hidden behind the fixture, with some thermally conductive electrically insulative epoxy to glue them on.
When the snow flies I'll start working on my wood stove heat exchanger to heat water in the winter. That will look a lot like this project with a copper manifold and water jacket loops around the sides of the wood stove. I splurged on TEG modules to go between the wood stove and water block to make a couple hundred watts while I heat the water.
Nice to see some other makers around