Well, due to work and family time (I am stealth, no one knows about my op except my pets), I am not complete yet. Not too bad, have all of my LEDs on the heat sink, all whites and most of reds wired up. I tested every single LED before adhering to sink, all looks good. I chose to go solder-less since this was my first time and 60 LEDs are involved, and I have not soldered since high school unless you count some time soldering copper pipe about 10 years ago. Even back in HS my soldering was very limited (one or two classes)? So I was hesitant to go that way for my first time.
Some mistakes I've made thus far:
(1) Going with 2 - 8.46" x 10" sinks instead of 1 - 20". The idea was to be able to build one fixture per 1 ft^2, for each plant basically. I ended up going with one whole fixture because of the way my tent is and me using boxes to keep plants at different levels. That meant tying them back together into one unit using 3/4" angle and self-tapping screws. Not that bad, but had limited equipment and messed up a couple of holes. Nothing major, just detracts from the visual build quality.
(2) Not buying all of my solder-less red LEDs from one source. I bought the XP-Es from LedGroupBuy and the Rebel ES from RapidLed. Two different types of connectors which is not that hard to overcome, but if you make a stoner move...well, I ran out of connectors of the latter type. I would not have had I paid attention to what I was doing...I wasted many connectors. I am debating my next move (see below).
(3) Not fixing issues as they arise. I had one screw from (1) above that needed to be pulled out, should have done it long before mounting the LEDs. Well, tried to do it afterwards and broke one of the RapidLeds connectors off when I hit it with the other side of the angle nose pliers. That means either buying a replacement, popping the broken one off and replacing, or soldering.
I tried to find some more connectors locally for the RapidLed type. The Led GroupBuy solder-less only require wire, the RapidLeds have a 2-pin molex. RadioShit did not have anything, sadly, that is all I have. So I then debated ordering more and waiting to the end of the week at earliest for them to arrive or biting the bullet and finishing the job with solder. I already had a 25w pen with a fine tip (never used!), so I started reading up and watching videos. Looks pretty simple imho.
So I went back to the Shack and picked up some 60/40 solder and a small cheap bread board to practice on. Pre-tinned both the wire and the contact, then put the wire onto the contact and the soldering iron onto the wire. Walah! Did this a couple of times, checked the resistance, and none of the joints were bad! So I'm going to finish up by soldering. Its pretty easy, actually, but I'm still happy I went solder-less for my first go. My only concern is that the LEDs are already in contact with the heatsink and I've read it makes it harder to heat up the contact on the star. We'll see.
Here is a pic of one 30 piece set. I changed a few things around, just orientation, but this is pretty much how they were distributed:
I will update more when I can get back on the project.
