Catching up: What is the current economical diy led setup?

It looks like supra is gone? Sad day for me.

I'm not chasing high efficiency, but rather upfront cost to power.

I have two of the cree 3070's at 50ish watts, and a couple of vero 10's I think at 8 watts.

I missed out when the strips became the thing, I saw people were running them on baking sheets or something rather than heatsink profile?

So what's the thing now? Ideally passive cooling I think.

I have roughly 3'10" x 4'10" and might have been 4'10" tall as well. So I'm thinking more distributed light to minimize height needed.

I'm still running cobs, efficiency isnt that far off from strips or qb's. Upgrading your light would be the cheapest easiest route.
Maybe add a few strips to fill in the spaces between the cobs.

I just run DIY Bridgelux EB Gen 2's riveted onto aluminium, basically the same as 'cookie sheet', with a Meanwell driver. I like it a lot.
Gonna add some more strips for better efficiency and some 660's soon so I can finally be in the cool kids club.

Digikey is my dealer but it seems they don't do wago's or much thermal tape which is very, very lame.

Got some pics if you wanna see 'em but people will probably laugh at my wiring because I designed it all f'd up from not quite knowing what I was up to lol..

Voidling said:

It looks like supra is gone? Sad day for me.

I'm not chasing high efficiency, but rather upfront cost to power.

I have two of the cree 3070's at 50ish watts, and a couple of vero 10's I think at 8 watts.

I missed out when the strips became the thing, I saw people were running them on baking sheets or something rather than heatsink profile?

So what's the thing now? Ideally passive cooling I think.

I have roughly 3'10" x 4'10" and might have been 4'10" tall as well. So I'm thinking more distributed light to minimize height needed.

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The EB gen2 strips can still be picked up at a real steal from digikey and can be attached to L shape aluminium profile to keep cost low.
There is also cutter cree J series strips which are reasonably priced and pretty efficient.

There is also china boards as an economic option but given your height restriction your probably best with the bridgelux EB gen 2 strips.

Yeah unfortunately Supra and many others haven't been seen for a long while now and the days of folks showing impressive COB builds also seems a thing of the past.
On the plus side it couldn't be much simpler to knock up a budget build that performs great.

@Boatguy it's not the efficiency of my cobs, just don't have enough power. plus it needs more gap between light and plants I believe. So I plan to put the cobs I have for cloning and veg then do a new light for flower.

@Mitchician how much aluminum are you running per strip or watt? I'm not familiar with thermal tape.

@coreywebster From what I could tell they didn't have the 4 foot strips in stock but said they'd ship like next day so I'm not sure.

How many watts are people running per square foot with these leds and getting good results?

How hard can you run them on the aluminum L?

Thanks all

My two heatsinks are 320x420mm each and I have 4 strips on one and 6 on the other, evenly spaced on both. I put them like that to see how close I could put them together before getting too hot with only passive cooling, and I wanted to leave space between them because at the time I was thinking of putting some Vesta strips on one and some 660nm reds on the other, but knowing my broke procrastinating ass I just turned the driver up and I run them up to their their max current and make 'em pull 150ish watts from the wall. There's a big old box fan blowing directly on them 24/7 though so they never get more than 10c over ambient, but running them that hard is still dumb as shit, somebody needs to kick my ass into gear so I can finish my damn light. Just thought you might've wanted to know that though in case you're a broke ass like me who plans to run them at max current.

Thermal tape is what most people use to fix strips to their heatsinks, but because I didn't like the low thermal conductivity of it, and because I already have all the stuff needed to rivet the strips on, I got some S606-C thermal grease instead, which was about 3x better at carrying the heat from the LED to the heatsink, while also being cheaper in the long run. It's just more time consuming to install and doesn't look as clean.

Voidling said:

@Boatguy it's not the efficiency of my cobs, just don't have enough power. plus it needs more gap between light and plants I believe. So I plan to put the cobs I have for cloning and veg then do a new light for flower.

@Mitchician how much aluminum are you running per strip or watt? I'm not familiar with thermal tape.

@coreywebster From what I could tell they didn't have the 4 foot strips in stock but said they'd ship like next day so I'm not sure.

How many watts are people running per square foot with these leds and getting good results?

How hard can you run them on the aluminum L?

Thanks all

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I think a lot of folks are running around 30-35w per square foot and you should be fine running 4ft EBs around that on L or U aluminium.
Pretty much all my lights are now boards, I get good results with 33w psf at around 18", if I ran harder I would only have to raise the lights an inch or two, not sure how that would translate with a par meter.

I've been running several dozen BXEB Gen1s bare naked, at 1050ma for nearly 3 years. Any sort of aluminum framing, will provide ample thermal management for said amperage.
1/8 Aluminum U Chanel, and thermal tape took care of 1400ma without issue.

Voidling, it looks like you have approx. 20 sq ft of canopy you're trying to light. I'd think that any strip or light engine using either the lm561c or lm301b(h) diodes would rock that space on a 600w driver. I use 2 pairs of double row 44"F strips mounted on 2"x .125" aluminum strips as sinks. I run them as veg lights and flower booster on a 320w driver, so 80w/strip and they get to about 95degF.
I also use a clone QB light(480w) with lm301b/660nm diode(4 boards) on a 4mm thick aluminum plate 22'x24".
At full power, it will run at 52degC-125F.
Strips are easier to manage thermally but the current offering of light engines packs a big punch.
Choose your poison.

I'm thinking I should just ditch that awkward sized box. Debating on several 2x2 coverages or 4x4 coverages.

@GBAUTO @coreywebster I've been looking around for the qb clones this morning. Which brand do you use or have the best recommendations?

It looks like the 12 strip lights plus a driver is going to be hitting a bit over $200 alone for 470w. I saw kingbrite looks to only be a touch over that, and meijiu only a little more than that. Though my last alibaba grow experience wasn't good.

@coreywebster there were some true craftsman making cob lights. I think stardustsailor was but I can't find any photos of his work now. And I remember supra starting in led when we were learning from knna, supra had the patience to do all the soldering of individual leds and I did not.

Speaking of people disappearing, a breeder was going to send me some seeds but I haven't heard from him in a month or so, hoping everything is ok there. Was given some super hot pepper seeds yesterday so guess I'll go for a different kind of high.

@Chip Green do you mean your strips are only attached at the ends to a frame? Not backed to anything?

Voidling said:

I'm thinking I should just ditch that awkward sized box. Debating on several 2x2 coverages or 4x4 coverages.

@GBAUTO @coreywebster I've been looking around for the qb clones this morning. Which brand do you use or have the best recommendations?

It looks like the 12 strip lights plus a driver is going to be hitting a bit over $200 alone for 470w. I saw kingbrite looks to only be a touch over that, and meijiu only a little more than that. Though my last alibaba grow experience wasn't good.

@coreywebster there were some true craftsman making cob lights. I think stardustsailor was but I can't find any photos of his work now. And I remember supra starting in led when we were learning from knna, supra had the patience to do all the soldering of individual leds and I did not.

Speaking of people disappearing, a breeder was going to send me some seeds but I haven't heard from him in a month or so, hoping everything is ok there. Was given some super hot pepper seeds yesterday so guess I'll go for a different kind of high.

@Chip Green do you mean your strips are only attached at the ends to a frame? Not backed to anything?

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Yeah man there has been some great guys to learn from, Stardust and supra were just starting to have less of a presence on here as I was just getting into LED, but obviously I was directed to them and their threads for advice.
Mau5 helped me mostly and saved me a ton of coin I was planning on spending, he's gone off to work for chilLED now and moved to a legal state. Wish I had that option.

As far as the clone QBs, mine are genuine HLGs and I have some from AUS that a member here (prawn connery) had made called "high lights"
Those have UV and IR added , i think 97cri whites and are a bigger board. Only one run under those but they performed well.

The Chinese options are the ones you've mentioned and a new addition pops up called BAVA which I think may have separate channels for the UV/ IRs.
I assume you've checked out the "Chinese quantum board" thread? Some good grows been shown and discussions from the regulars on there.
Hard to beat those prices with kingbrite , of course they have brought out new versions with this and that which are more expensive but despite the popularity im not sure the extra cost has been proven to be worth it yet.

Slowly working my way through it at the moment. Can't remember either ir or uv is only to be used during a certain time so always on or a manual switch like bava has isn't going to help me. When I left people were experimenting with far red for a few minutes before lights out. I don't see discussing of that currently so I guess it wasn't found to be worth while.

I'm thinking of getting straight whites and then maybe later come in with some far red, ir, uv side panels if I think it could be worth it.

Are the panels advertised as actual watts?

I was trying to see how they would fit but the dimensions listed seem like they are bigger than the area they cover at 30w per square foot. I'm hoping that it's shipping size with packaging.

Maus doesn't sound familiar so maybe I was gone when he came in. I knew greengenes from back when though.

Personally I don't care for the state's that have legalized. Had a friend from here move to Cali to grow. I warned him it wasn't such a good idea. Ran into all kinds of problems with the government mess of regulations, fees, and taxes and ended up moving back out.it's a shame because the land there is gorgeous but I only lasted 7 months before I couldn't take it any longer

Normally the boards are listed as the diode count and then the diode like QB288 301b or as a wattage if its a kit with the driver.
They don't give as much info as Horticultural lighting group, worth checking there for max ratings, though don't assume the voltages will be the same with the clones. But mostly the 288 boards will be those exact dimensions listed on there.
I believe where the kits are concerned they just list the driver wattage, typically 120w a board with heat sink, but they will draw a bit more either due to the drivers putting out more and/or the inefficiencies of the driver. Example, my 260w kit from HLG draws 285w.

"The far red" thread is still kicking about, not sure on what was concluded though.
Greengenes still pops his head in to tell us all off for not showing enough LED grows to back up the GPW claims

Voidling said:

@Chip Green do you mean your strips are only attached at the ends to a frame? Not backed to anything?

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That is correct, anywhere around 1000ma each, for 560mm EB Gen1 3500k, have been running that way, in perpetuity, for going on 3 years, without a single failure...
They're rigid enough to hang nearly flat on their own.
Any sort of aluminum angle, or U channel will beef up the durability sufficiently.

Have there been any cheaper ways to cool the QB clones?

Came across this article on commercial led lights with water cooling