New here, 2x3x3 Cab [Complete] [480w SolStrips]

Hell yes! Everyone welcome my friend from the north!

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Welcome @Manfromthenorth perfect thread for an intro.

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Welcome @Manfromthenorth!

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So iā€™ll tell yaā€™ll a little bit about @Manfromthenorth since heā€™s been VERY busy with his property, horses, life in general.

These will all be snippets from him from another site. He wonā€™t mind, weā€™re pretty tight.

Iā€™ll let him fill in any blanks but that lets yaā€™ll know what heā€™s workin with. Iā€™d really like him and @lotus710 to get acquainted as he would totally be into #knf and #notill

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welcome @Manfromthenorth so are you in like churchill or alaska or something ??

Got my strips installed, heatsink compound liberally applied. :smiley:

And got it wired, this was TEDIOUS lol. I chose Parallel for simplicity (haha, 10 strips isnā€™t simple imo)

And a close up of the work.

Gotta get some lock nuts for my eye bolts tomorrow, so Iā€™m not gonna install this tonight. I knowā€¦ I knowā€¦ We all wanna see blinding light lol.

Jelly

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Ok I lied haha. Looks like i got two warmer strips (probably mislabeled at the factory but Iā€™m still happy as hell)
This is the strips at 20v

And this is them at 20.8 (My shitty little adjustable power supply is supposed to be able to crank out 24v 20aā€¦ but obviously canā€™t handle itā€™s advertised specs. 20.8 is as high as it will go. Time to order that meanwell lol)

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Update!

I am now partially blind at least for the time being!

I found the AC input selector switch on my cheap little power supply wasnā€™t fully engaged in the 115v selection, and when I fully engaged the switch, I have full power capabilities now.

HOLY FUCK THESE THINGS ARE AS BRIGHT AS WELDING! Iā€™ve got hundreds of little spots in my vision because when I toggled the switch it just happened to brighten the fuck up and blind me lol.

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Iā€™m gonna call this one done! Light is mounted and operational! I doubled up on the supply wire (18g solid tstat wire, rated for 150v or something high like that) just for safety.

Since the last led lights I had only put out 135w I only have my light set to 250w right now, I figure with the added distance and extra 115w that I should ease them into my target of 350w

Will monitor temps and heatsink temps just to make sure I donā€™t have any fuckery going on, but this completes my Cabinet build!

Thanks for everyone who stayed with me along the way!

Jelly

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Looks great! I still have to do something with my 3x SolStrips.

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Very nice and clean @Jellypowered. Looks like a nice even light field. What is your spacing between strips? Whatā€™s your temps on the back of the sinks after 30 minutes?

FYI: the SolStrip website is open for business. Version 1.0, with much more coming soon.

-b420

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I have them spaced every 3 inches, total length of 30" on my fixture.

I donā€™t have an exact measurement but I can touch the heatsinks and itā€™s no warmer than a warm cup of coffee, Iā€™ll use my temp gun when I get back home and update this post.

Edit: The hottest bars are the outside bar, and they are 94F or 34.5C the interior ones that have more air moving across them are 84F or 28.8C (Note, 84 is pretty close to ambient today)

Fascinating @Jellypowered! I dont have much electrical knowledge, much less experience, but these solsrips are something i need. Is there a ā€œSolstrip for dummiesā€ source that you know of? Thanks bro!

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Well, everything depends on how many strips you have, and how hard you want to run them. :slight_smile:

Iā€™ll try to break it down as simply as I can using my setup as an example.

Each strip maxes out at 24 volts, 2 amps. This equals 48 watts per strip (Voltage x Amps = Wattage)

I chose to wire them in parallel (All positives connected together, all negatives connected together)

I have 10 strips, If i want to be able to max them out, I need a 24 volt (Since we are wiring parallel the voltage stays the same) 20 amp (To calculate needed amps, 10 strips x 2 amps max) power supply.

Meanwell has pretty easy to decipher drivers,
If you wanted to be able to run them at max youā€™d want a HLG-480H-24A
The 480 in their product code means wattage, the 24 is voltage, the A is reserved for special functions (A being built in dimmer, B being remote dimming (too complicated for me) and I believe if there is just a 24 without a letter after it, itā€™s constant power at max output.

If you wanted to run them at 75%
HLG-320H-24A
320w for 10 strips in parallel.

Please note, I was informed that because where I plan to run them, heatsinks were a really good idea.
Hereā€™s some info on that

Since iā€™m running mine at 300w iā€™m effectively running them at 62.5% of maximum possible output. However, I wanted the option to run them at 480w (100%) So I opted to get the custom heatsinks (I call them SolSinks) that Baudelaire sells as well. I will probably need to add a fan at some point if I do run them at max, but at 300w the heatsinks getting the least flow are still only 94F. The ones directly below my ventilation are running at ambient temp in my cab, which is 84F at the warmest. This makes sense because they are getting the most air moving around them.

I wonā€™t get into series wiring because I prefer the safety in lower voltages.

But hereā€™s a perfect example of series and parallel wiring.

If you have any more questions Iā€™m sure @Baudelaire or myself could help you out. Got some strips yet? If not, why not lol.

@Baudelaire has his website up and running now, SolStrip Photon Solutions

Edited to add more information and some more math stuff. Learning is fun no? lol.

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Wow! Outstanding my man! Many thanks. After several readings and your tutelage I believe this is doable. Even for an old and high hippie! One Love!

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You always have us you can ask if you run into hiccups.
I keep editing my post to clarify more things and make it hopefully simpler.

One thing I want to stress, please use the correct sized wiring for your chosen load (amps)
I used 18g solid thermostat wire, technically it is only rated for 10 amps over 50 feet. I chose to double up my strands on the supply side to my ā€œarrayā€ for safety. When I only ran one set of wire, it was getting warm (not hot) so I decided two would be better to distribute the load. None of the wiring on the light itself gets noticeably warm, so I am not gonna worry about it since I have less than 5 feet of total wire.

Edit: I just noticed, my wiring looks complicated in my pics above, but itā€™s only because I chose to use Wago Connectors (3 hole, joined internally, push fit) so I didnā€™t have to mess with wire nuts. I hate wire nuts.

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Old school: wire nuts and electrical tape baby! :grin:

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i used i think 18g stranded wire rated for 300v, was like 20$ on amazon for 50ft each of 5 different colours, so i could differentiate between the -/+ on my 2 drivers.

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I chose the t-stat wire because it was at home depot and I couldnā€™t remember how big would fit in the solstrips push fit connectors.

I also chose solid wire because I have my light mounted in a static position, So I wonā€™t be moving it around causing stress on the wire. :slight_smile:

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My phone is down Iā€™ll get at ya on here jelly and I am in northern Maine.