I’m wanting to build a new led light and am curious what brand and style of strips you guys would consider buying at current times with focus on reasonable price? The last led light I built was based on bridgelux gen 2 strips @3500k. Are the bridgelux gen3 strips doing well for you guys or are samsung doing better right now? Is 3500k still the preferred color temp? Also, last driver was a HLG but it seems like some of you are using the XLG ones. Isn’t the difference constant current vs constant power? If so what’s the pros and cons?
Heat sinks, I asked this topic before and some of you guys don’t run heatsinks…at least on the bridgelux strips. I used flatbar on the last one but I’d rather not waste money if it’s not necessary. Sinking is suppose to run the led cooler which gives you better color accuracy and extend the life from what I remember. For those that are not running sinks how have your strips fared long term and how do you support them, can you provide a pic or example? Here is my thread on this and a pic of my last one.
Hey bro, was hoping you’d chime in. How hard do you push your strips? In the light I attached above it was 9x bridgelux gen 2 strips running on a HLG-185H driver and I ran them about 180-190W according to the watt meter I had. I could put my hand on the backside of the light…the flat bare was pretty hot…hot enough to where I didn’t want to hold my hand there. Even running them at 150W the flat bar soaked up a lot of heat. Are you saying you run like this without any issue?
So, again how hard do you push your strips? How do you hang them…do you build a frame?
My setup uses 2’ Bridgelux strips @3500k. If I were to run these at 100%, they would burn everything up, so I use Photone app to dial my DLI in. My light is connected to a potentiometer so I can adjust the lights accordingly.
Right…forgive me but I’m not able to form a general hypothesis of how hard you push them from a electrical standpoint. Have you ever hooked them up to a watt meter (killawatt) to see how hard you push them overall then divide that by the amount of strips to gauge a per strip power usage? Then, base that number by the manufactures 100% total power number. For example, a single strip is able to push 50W total but you’re running it a 25W…so half power. I guess what I’m looking for is a percentage (%) of total overall manufactures rated output that we can safely run these strips without sinks. Do the manufactures provide a acceptable power to drive their strips without heat sinks?
I see hear what you are asking. I hooked everything up to my killawatt and tested it after final wiring and got the correct wattage for the string of lights. But I think you will find some great information in this thread and posting your questions there will garner more responses to help you get what you are looking for. I used information from this thread to build my light.
