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12 - 3w cree XP-G (white)
12 - 3w cree XP-E (royal blue)
1 - meanwell 35-700 driver
1 - meanwell 60-1050 driver
60 degree lenses
10in X 10in heatsink
Custom Hood
After the excruciating wait for the parts I drilled holes into the corner of the heatsink and hood to mount the heatsink I also marked where I wanted the LEDs with a black permanent marker.
Next I used thermal adhesive to glue the LEDs onto the heatsink. You can also drill and tap your heatsink or buy one already drilled and tapped so you screw the LEDs into place but as a newb I thought this would be easier and it was pretty easy. Then using zip ties I mounted the drivers into the hood.
After waiting a day or so for the adhesive to dry I started to solder the LEDs together. Pretty simple. Just go from positive to neg, positive to neg, wash rinse repeat.
Just finishing the blues:
All wired up:
After all the soldering I used a small amount of super glue gel to attach the lenses and hung the light.
I had some problems after plugging in the fixture where 1 blue and 1 white had blown for some unknown reason and I had to bypass them. All I can say is a multimeter is necessary to check the connections on these LEDs since the output voltage is so low and it really helped me get it all working correctly.
Came out pretty good though I think
blues
whites and blues
Overall the process was pretty easy considering I've never soldered before.
Parts were purchased as follows:
-hood's from catalina aquariums
-heatsink i bought from heatsinkusa
-everything else i bought from rapidLED
and a wiring diagram can be found here:
http://reefledlights.com/wiring-diagrams/
I hope this can help anyone to build their own LED light. At first it may seem overwhelming but getting down to it, its alot easier than you might think.
