Flowering with Cree bulbs

What a strange company, I got a refund from them through paypal dispute in under 2 hours with the comment out of stock. Why wouldn't they just return my email or voice mail and tell me they where out or how long till I could get them.

The new girl is moved in and tomorrow night will be the start of 12/12.

That is one sweet facility. Shit the bed Fred.

Rrog said:

That is one sweet facility. Shit the bed Fred.

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She fits this 31 inch square cabinet like a glove,glad I went with the 15 gal pot with 10 gal of soil. She's a low rider,27 wide 9 tall.

i cant wait to see how it turns out.im using cfls right now maybe buy some cree's.got a question can you take the bulb cover off or would the light not do as good?prob stupid question lol

You can take the bulb cover off, it should increase performance, not reduce it.
https://www.rollitup.org/led-other-lighting/626538-multichip-led-remote-phosphor-guess-23.html#post9449385

Supposedly you can take the glass dome off without adding heat? You might wanna look into that.

The first 4 I bought,2 came off easily by hand and the next 2 I could not budge so I decided to just run them with globes on rather than heating them and risking damage.

ill deff be watching.thanks guys.

Tj-max for Cree XT-E is 150ºC (~300ºF). I don't see 200ºF for 20 minutes damaging the LED's (unless afterwards you take it apart like me! ><). You could also just whack the glass dome with a hammer and pull all the glass out. I saw a teardown video following this method.

Bumping Spheda said:

Tj-max for Cree XT-E is 150ºC (~300ºF). I don't see 200ºF for 20 minutes damaging the LED's (unless afterwards you take it apart like me! ><). You could also just whack the glass dome with a hammer and pull all the glass out. I saw a teardown video following this method.

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Thought I saw someone here damage a Cree bulb using the 200 method,one or two of the diodes turned blue? Have you heard any estimate on how much light energy is blocked by the globes on these?

Nope, I don't know what the globe absorbs, but diffusers tend to reduce lumens by quite a bit. Imo it's worth it. I'd wager ~10% efficiency increase by removing the glass, but who knows. If you look at Cree's XT-E HVW documentation the 12V model (what's used in the 9.5W Cree bulb) has an ideal luminous flux of 93.9lm. The 9.5W Cree bulb achieves 84.2lm/W (800lm/9.5W). That's about 10%, but that's pretty rough math work.

I'm guessing his LED's went Blue because he did what I did, but wasn't as fortunate. I pulled the glass off and it shaved the protective dome off two of my LED's. I can see it cut down pretty deeply and close to the phosphor. I'm guessing he was unlucky enough to have shave the phosphor right off. If you're careful with disassembly you shouldn't have a problem, but it's easier once you've taken a bulb apart and know where you can go wrong.

When the glass is hot you just want to crack the glue. You want/need deliberate, yet controlled, force. You don't want the glass dome to jerk outwards once you crack the glue because you'll drag it across the LED's. If you're super worried make sure to crack the glue when it's hot, then place the bulb somewhere safe while everything cools down a bit so you can safely get the glass off.

Or, just whack the glass with a hammer lightly to crack it, then pull glass shards out with pliers. No heat needed.

-Edit-
You got me wondering.

As you can see, the two damaged chips (second column from the left) don't look too out of the ordinary when illuminated, but if you look closely the top chip (the one that got damaged more) has some Blue light shining up onto the floor, and neither chip looks quite as bright as the rest, imo. So even I have some phosphor damage I didn't immediately notice. I'm not worried, I won't be flowering with these, but I do feel dumb for shooting myself in the foot like that. Definitely be careful with glass removal regardless of method.

I'm going to think on that,might be worth keeping the globes on for a while for the 10 year warranty. A lot of first gen products have problems and they often make a revision to correct them. I had one die already and exchanged it at home depot.

I agree with you. If you look on youtube there's a teardown of this bulb and the guy taking the video actually comments on how the metal core PCB in his wasn't formed correctly so there were large, visible air gaps between the PCB and the... ?decagon-allly? shaped heat sink. Mine, however, was bought a bit later and the PCB was formed perfectly around the structure. I feel their quality control may have risen a bit, possibly due to recalls.

Well the dry weight is in,188 watts of Cree bulbs and 170 grams of trimmed bud.

Bumping Spheda said:

I'm guessing his LED's went Blue because he did what I did, but wasn't as fortunate. I pulled the glass off and it shaved the protective dome off two of my LED's. I can see it cut down pretty deeply and close to the phosphor. I'm guessing he was unlucky enough to have shave the phosphor right off. If you're careful with disassembly you shouldn't have a problem, but it's easier once you've taken a bulb apart and know where you can go wrong.

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Exactamundo. I thought it was heat at first but it was me being my typical careless self and I basically shaved of the resin and removed most of the phosphors, hence the blue. I've heated them less than 170F and removed them just as easy. Just let them sit at 150 to 160F for 5 minutes. I've taken a few apart already and have tried unfolding them perfectly straight. I've had a tough time doing it without damaging the diode's connections or the diodes themselves. Seems pretty tricky. Rewiring the drivers is another story too. Very difficult to solder the connection back on the PCB. Or should I say it's very diificult to remove the driver from the bulb without pulling off at least one of the connections, cathode I think. I've yet to get a flat working set out of 2 bulbs so far and have decided to say fuckit and hopefully the next few sets of CREE models will be even more favorable to growers. Still running without globes is a plus IMO, except in a situation where you can't move the bulb away from the plant. Maybe you could even go so far as to say that with the design of the bulb you're better off running them stock to get a more homogeneous beam. Hmmmm?

FranJan said:

Exactamundo. I thought it was heat at first but it was me being my typical careless self and I basically shaved of the resin and removed most of the phosphors, hence the blue. I've heated them less than 170F and removed them just as easy. Just let them sit at 150 to 160F for 5 minutes. I've taken a few apart already and have tried unfolding them perfectly straight. I've had a tough time doing it without damaging the diode's connections or the diodes themselves. Seems pretty tricky. Rewiring the drivers is another story too. Very difficult to solder the connection back on the PCB. Or should I say it's very diificult to remove the driver from the bulb without pulling off at least one of the connections, cathode I think. I've yet to get a flat working set out of 2 bulbs so far and have decided to say fuckit and hopefully the next few sets of CREE models will be even more favorable to growers. Still running without globes is a plus IMO, except in a situation where you can't move the bulb away from the plant. Maybe you could even go so far as to say that with the design of the bulb you're better off running them stock to get a more homogeneous beam. Hmmmm?

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Hey Fran,I'm thinking of getting a tent and getting some of those Cree floods for veg. What do you think of 9 Cree 5000k floods in this for veg and some more Crees in the propagation part. I'm thinking the 3' x 3' model,are these Secret Jardin any good?

http://www.secretjardin.com/en/grow-tent-secret-jardin/dark-room-twin-grow-tent-secret-jardin.html

Not sure what you're having issues with, Fran. Have you seen the "walk through" in my thread? I'd be glad to help if you're at all interested in finishing the project. I've got my first one running (waiting to be attached to incoming heat sink) and the process seemed pretty straight forward to me.

captainmorgan said:

Hey Fran,I'm thinking of getting a tent and getting some of those Cree floods for veg. What do you think of 9 Cree 5000k floods in this for veg and some more Crees in the propagation part. I'm thinking the 3' x 3' model,are these Secret Jardin any good?

http://www.secretjardin.com/en/grow-tent-secret-jardin/dark-room-twin-grow-tent-secret-jardin.html

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Hey Cap'n. I like the spots for Veg, but I would most definitely add some 2700K/630 for speedier growth. I've been vegging some SLH under 4 5000K/2700K 10x3 watt XPE spots with OK results, though SLH isn't the best test plant IMO. I'm gonna veg some Black Widow soon and that will tell me more. Those CREES spots are a little wacky btw. I read that it's the same tower design but the diodes are designed so more light emanates from their sides.
And 600 mil min. for tents I believe , right?

Bumping Spheda said:

Not sure what you're having issues with, Fran. Have you seen the "walk through" in my thread? I'd be glad to help if you're at all interested in finishing the project. I've got my first one running (waiting to be attached to incoming heat sink) and the process seemed pretty straight forward to me.

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Hey BS, what's going on? No I haven't seen the walkthrough but I will definitely check it out. I'm always a bit of a bull in a china shop so it's my nature to fuck shit up at first .

FranJan said:

Hey Cap'n. I like the spots for Veg, but I would most definitely add some 2700K/630 for speedier growth. I've been vegging some SLH under 4 5000K/2700K 10x3 watt XPE spots with OK results, though SLH isn't the best test plant IMO. I'm gonna veg some Black Widow soon and that will tell me more. Those CREES spots are a little wacky btw. I read that it's the same tower design but the diodes are designed so more light emanates from their sides.
And 600 mil min. for tents I believe , right?

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I have a week or so to decide on the tent and lights for it. I need some feedback on a design to add some deep red to the Cree cabinet that I'm going to order from Steve's LED. I have a 9" x 9" space in the center of my hood that this would fit into. It has one of steves fans at the center and the aluminum heat sink tube is cut to spiral around the fan and will have 7-3 watt Luxeon ES 660 nm LEDs running at 700 ma. Any opinions?

Here's a pic of the new girl after 4 days of 12/12 with the 730 nm at lights out. She's grown about 6" already.