newb needing help with luxeon

[jagz]

hi :wave:all im new to this forum and im looking for some help.

right i have no knowledge at all about leds but i want to make a light unit for my marine fish tank out of leds as metal halide lighting costs a bomb to run.
so i want to run about 40 white luxeon stars (LXHL-MW1D) and about 5 blue stars (LXHL-MRRD).
i need them to run around 10-12 hours a day.

right so could somebody please tell me what i need in the way of power supplies, resistors, heatsinks and so on

sorry if im asking alot but i cant find this info anywhere else and this is my last resort.

cheers jagz

 

[SemiMan]

Love LEDs, but right now, Metal Halide is in general more efficient\cheaper for large amounts of light. Only advantage is your can direct LEDS better. The Luxeons you are looking at are old and not efficient. New ones (temporary not being sold due to quality issue) are much more efficient. In the short term you will need to go with Cree XRE. You can find lots on here about both.

Semiman

 

[spencer]

I don't know too much but here it goes.
For power supplies you will need either a Xitanium driver or just a 120VAC to 12VDC converter (that you can pick up for a few bucks) and then from there to a BuckPuck or similar driver. You will need more than one BuckPuck to power the 45 LEDs and the drivers come in 350mA, 700mA, and 1000mA. I don't know enough to know how many of what you need. You should be able to just hook the LEDs up to the driver and you are ready. If you don't overdrive the LEDs then you don't need any additional heatsinking than just the star the emitter comes on. Also with a driver you don't need resistors.

 

[jagz]

hi spencer im in the uk will that power supply work in 240v , and do u know how i can find out how many buckpucks i will need.

jagz

 

[spencer]

If you use the Xitanium driver, and you can get them in 230v (and they will probably work with the extra 10v), you don't need the BuckPucks. You can find the Xitanium driver here. If you go with the Xitanium Driver then you don't need the 12V converter and the Buckpucks. If you go with the Buckpucks I still don't know how many you need but there are a lot of documents on the web. LuxeonStar.com has links to these documents and they have all the products you will need. The BuckPuck route is probably cheaper.

 

[Lightingguy321]

You will need either one high capacity Xitanium LED driver or several smaller wattage ones. As for the LEDs you may want to use a Cree-XRE or Seoul P4 instead of the Luxeon I since the Luxeon I is kind of old and outdated. For heat sinks, see if you can find an extrusion that is the same width as the LEDs and that the LEDs can sit in. Are you goign to be using optics? If so that extrusion also doubles as a housing for the LEDs, optics and a front protective (transparent or diffused) cover. Keep in mind, without optics the light pattern is too far spread out to be any use as task lighting. You may want to consider a collimator optic like the Fraen or the NX05. If your budget is good, you can go with McR reflectors or you can spend a little less and use IMS SOX17 or SOX20 (i think that those are the model numbers), which work only with luxeons. McR reflectors are more flexible and can be used with Seoul, Cree, and lumileds (depends on model).