@bunny tell me about the lights you’re building?
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Here is where I hang my head in shame. I have bought dollar Store light bulbs, smacked them around a little and mounted the circuit board on industrial aluminum curtain rails. One thing missing from the post below is I insulated the live section of the modules with a dab of silicone, otherwise you could touch 120V.
Bunny's Mad Misshapes. (CBD with a sprinkling of other adventures) - #12 by bunny
It was suppose to be just for a veg tent but then I needed a quick set of lights for some extra plants, and again, after a time I just went with them. They were a buck a bulb for a 14W, they have gone up to $1.50 now though. Other than the heat shrink tubing and bulbs they did not cost me anything. As prices have gone down on leds since I made my first one I may have gone a different way if I started all over today.
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That’s budget growing, love it! We gotta make light somehow.
Long, long ago, I raided my local Habitat for Humanity for bathroom fixtures and put several of them on wooden strips, railroad tie style. Then I screwed CFL bulbs in. 25 for the 5x5 and 24 for the 4x6 lol
I also built my own circular light mover for a 1000W HPS from a mountain bike, a windshield wiper motor assembly from a Honda Civic and some odds and ends. It worked awesome!
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A random pic from back in the day.
This wall of Jillybean was 6’ tall, 4’ wide and about 16" thick. She yielded 32.5oz dry:
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Doing hard time in trim jail.
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We used to pull half a dozen of these about every 12 days or so, over 1/2 lb a day average. From just 600ft² total.
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HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! To a better year than the last!
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Hey bud, Happy New Years.
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Well done! You always were a fine grower.
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And to you, sir!
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Thanks, man. Coming from you, that’s high praise.
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I’m really happy to see you are experiencing 100% rooting on the clones now! Congrats!
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Thanks! It’s about 80%. The rest might come in later but that’s no biggie because I don’t need nearly this many.
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I just wrote this up elsewhere, thought I’d share this story here for you guys;
I built several light movers, all with the same purpose; to get as much growth out of one high powered lamp as possible.
Mine were built from old 10 speed mountain bikes and used the gear reduction. They were driven by junkyard windshield wiper assemblies mounted to drive the back tire backwards. The assembly was powered by a portable 12V battery charger on low power. It plugged into the same light time the lamp was.
No slip rings needed, the light hung from a swivel that kept it from twisting up the cord. The fixture was a horizontal parabolic wing (yes, one version did indeed use the famous “grow wing”) and it was mounted only a foot above the canopy.
The grow was arranged in a circle about 7’ diameter with mylar reflective material hung vertically all the way around.
The lamp itself was on a crossbar hanging from the crank arm of the bike. One end had the light, the other carried a counterweight.
The light itself was mounted about 30" from the center and the gearing was such that it took about 3 1/2 minutes to complete one revolution.
And yes, it worked! Here’s why I think it was effective; it turns out that cannabis, like many plants, can “charge up” on bright light and keep its photosynthetic processes going for about 3 minutes or so afterwards. The light never got far enough away to make the plants think it was dark; between the wing reflector and the mylar, everything got light all the time, even if it wasn’t the optimal amount.
So the 1000W HPS lamp was so close to the canopy that if the rotator ever stopped, it would fry the tops. Since it moved, the top buds never cooked but they got very strong, if intermittent light from all sides as the lamp passed overhead.
This way the plants all got really strong light but that same light was spread across the canopy, which was itself carefully managed by topping the plants and tying the branches down to spread them out into a flattop shape, a form of ScrOG only without a trellis net or panel.
I ran a dozen plants; 6 each in early bloom and 6 in late bloom, and swapped them about every 3 weeks since the strain I had finished in 6 weeks. Of course this meant I needed a perpetual veg to feed this setup with half a dozen bloom ready plants every 3 weeks, a process done with 4’ T12 shop lights in a separate space.
I pulled about a pound and a half every 3 weeks. Not too fuckin’ shabby for an old mountain bike, some car parts and a single thouie! Oh, more more detail; this setup pulled that weight even from an HPS lamp that was 4 years old because I didn’t know they deteriorated!
Thanks for the trip down memory lane! Somewhere, I still have pics of the rotator, I’ll have to find them.
Long story short; get LED, spread them evenly over the canopy and you’re way ahead of any silly ideas about moving lights.
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