Mean well dimming leads

[George2324]

how many watts will go through a dimming lead?

Can I use a standard cheap 600 ohm resistor?

I plan to wire 16 drivers together to a 600 ohm to limit min power to 10% and then a 5k pot will allow me to drive power up to 90%

Where would I wire the 600 ohm resistor in relation to the pot in order to get this effect?

Thanks

 

[Rahz]

The dim signal uses about 1/1000 of a watt so should be fine. The resistor can go anywhere in the dimming circuit.

Why would you limit the power to 90%? Seems better to slightly exceed the ohm requirements and make sure it's hitting 100%.

 

[George2324]

I'm setting up a high power co2 grow. My circuits are being installed rated for a max of 12000w

I'm using 110w per sq foot. If I maxed the drivers at 100% it would be 125w per sq foot which would leave me very little room for fans etc.

Due to number of cobs etc it worked out easier to get an extra driver otherwise I'd end up having one driver pushing 700ma to some cobs and 850ma to some others.

16 x mean well hlg-600h-36b drivers

320 cobs .

If I used 15 drivers I'd have uneven number of cobs on each driver.

I have to wire all the drivers in parallel

So could I do something like this
(Excuse the very bad drawing)

At the top all the positive wires together going into a resistor in series then into the pot in series and then the negative wire of pot leading to all the drivers negative wires in paralel?

 

[Rahz]

I'm using 110w per sq foot. If I maxed the drivers at 100% it would be 125w per sq foot which would leave me very little room for fans etc.

Understood.

At the top all the positive wires together going into a resistor in series then into the pot in series and then the negative wire of pot leading to all the drivers negative wires in paralel?

Yes that sounds right. You would use two terminal blocks one with the positive leads and one with the neutral leads. There would be a single wire between them with the pot and resistor.

 

[George2324]

Great thanks.

I was going to solder the cables rather than use a terminal block. Would that be ok?

 

[Rahz]

It will work, but that's a lot of wires to solder together. If you're going to build something that expensive might as well throw in a few bucks for a couple terminal blocks.

I'm using 110w per sq foot.

I just caught this. That's going to be WAY too much light. About half that would be hitting the upper limit. Let us know what emitters you have in mind and we can give you a better idea of the PPFD you'll get per foot. 25 PAR watts is hitting very high intensity and that can be done with 50% efficiency at 50 watts per foot.

 

[George2324]

1500 ppfd with co2 is my aim. That's what my design is built around.

Using citizien 1212 4 cobs per sq ft

 

[George2324]

600h drivers with 20 citi 1212 gen 5 cobs per driver.

A mix of 2 90 Cri and 2 80 cri for flower room

 

[Rahz]

Rough estimate you will need 56 watts per foot to achieve 1500 PPFD, or around 60 to negate reflective losses.

Also, don't melt any wires. That driver you're looking at will be pushing almost 17 amps.

 

[Rahz]

The HLG-600 looks like it has two sets of leads so maybe not 17 amps but they're still 14g on the DC side. Make sure you know what you're getting.

 

[George2324]

I used one of the calculators provided on this website to work out ppfd which made me go for this many cobs. Definitely wasn't 1500 ppfd at 60w on those calculators. I have all the cobs and drivers now so I'll just had to dim more if that's the case.

I have 9 gauge wire to wire between the LEDS to keep voltage drop to absolute minimum.

I'll hopefully get a par meter in a few weeks and I'll be able to test is extensively to find out

 

[George2324]

Just looked at the wire diagram for these 600's again.

Can't work out for the life of me what the RC + and RC- wires are for?

 

[Rahz]

It's in the spec chart. It might allow someone to turn it on/off without working that function into the power lines.