504W LED Aeroponics Bloom

Since the other thread got closed, this is the continuation of it. I'm going to post all of the pictures from the grow so you can see from start to finish very easily within the first page of the thread. Anyhow, I'm glad to be back and hopefully the moderators will respond this time if they are requested instead of temporarily banning me. You know, it'd be nice if they'd get back to me on advertising as well, so that I can pay them some money to get my banner on this site...

This is my friend's garden, who has been learning how to grow over the last couple of years. She's a medical patient here in WA and she runs nearly the same equipment as I do in my garden. She's using the 2' x 4' aero trays that I build, and 4 126W lights that I developed. That makes a total of 504W LED. Here are her results:

These pictures were taken 8-22-09:

These pictures were taken 9-4-09:

My friend hung up an extra 126W today, so now she has 5 totaling 630W LED!

These pictures were taken 9-10-09:

They demonstrate how the lights work in relation to each other. We start with all lights on and then turn them off 1 by 1 to show you just how much light each plant has access to. It's certainly not 504W

So the Ak47 ended up getting chopped early while I was on vacation, meaning we'll never get to see what she was fully capable of. Still, after she dried out and got trimmed, she came out to 7.5 ounces and she barely stood 2.5' tall!

So she had some AK47 left over from her previous harvest under HID (3800W), and I wanted to show you all the density difference with LED. I picked out two buds literally equal in size and weighed them one by one. Quite an impressive difference with LED

These pictures were taken 9-25-09 and 9-29-09:

I should have more pictures tomorrow, assuming Strawberry Cough has already been cut. My friend wanted to cut the harvest early to get started on her next set of plants doing the Scrog method. I'll make sure to document it as well

very impressive buds, what watt diodes do your fixtures have?

bigkuz68 said:

very impressive buds, what watt diodes do your fixtures have?

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1W only. We don't use anything else as 3W and 5W LED's lack the luminous efficacy of the 1W LED (meaning that 3, 1W LED's have a higher output than a single 3W, usually by quite a bit. the same is true for 5W). There is a false rumor going around that the higher powered LED's have more ability to penetrate, but if you talk to Cree or Luxeon, they'll let you know that they don't have any more ability than a 1W to carry light energy over long distances. The only way to achieve penetration is by narrowing the viewing angle to create an intense beam aimed directly at your canopy which is why we use a 60 degree LED.

makes sense, thanks for the info, will be watching for updates

bigkuz68 said:

makes sense, thanks for the info, will be watching for updates

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Likewise. I'm interested to see what you can do with your 700W setup We have two upcoming tests against ProSource: 1 with our 126W against their 180W Jumbo UFO, and another with 3 of our 63W's against their 180W Jumbo by a different customer. We're also going against Sunlight Hydro and Wellthink's 150W bar using 3W LED's. Hopefully we'll be going up against Haight and some others soon

LEDGirl said:

Likewise. I'm interested to see what you can do with your 700W setup We have two upcoming tests against ProSource: 1 with our 126W against their 180W Jumbo UFO, and another with 3 of our 63W's against their 180W Jumbo by a different customer. We're also going against Sunlight Hydro and Wellthink's 150W bar using 3W LED's. Hopefully we'll be going up against Haight and some others soon

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yeah, but in about a week that 700 is about 1200 i have 2 new fixtures on the way and i am eager to expand my grow with them, although i have to admit i am curious of the narrow 60 degree output

bigkuz68 said:

yeah, but in about a week that 700 is about 1200 i have 2 new fixtures on the way and i am eager to expand my grow with them, although i have to admit i am curious of the narrow 60 degree output

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I designed the lights around maximum yield (IE watts per square foot) vs most companies who try and get the biggest coverage area they can per light. I know that most good gardeners using a 400W light are doing so within a fairly small grow area, not some 5' x 5' room. They know that in order to achieve good results with your plants, you need at least 50W HID per square foot. That means a 400W should be in a 4' x 2' area, even though it's able to do a 4' x 4' area. Making the area even smaller with the use of mylar would increase the light even further in terms of watt/sq foot. So our 126W unit does a 2' x 3' coverage area at 12" above your plants. That means it supplies 21W per square foot of LED. Similar companies sell a 120W LED that covers up to a 5' x 5' area, equaling 4.5-4.8W per square foot (some units use 112W). Needless to say it's not sufficient enough light for robust flowering. Since LED is about 3-4x more efficient than LED in terms of watt/gram when used properly, we supply the equivalent of 63W-84W of HID light per square foot with our 126W. We supply even more with our 318W unit for those gardeners after the upper realm.

The other downside to 120 degree viewing angles is that the light they emit is less intense as it has to be spread over a much broader area. It's like the difference between a flashlight on wide beam and narrow beam. One's bright with a small coverage are. One's dim with a large area. The bright light is what's needed in order to get full penetration which leads to larger, denser buds all the way to the bottom of the plant.

subscribed

nice yield & good looking plants

[QUOTE="SICC";3182192]subscribed[/QUOTE]
same here, eager to see next grow start to finish

to the MF'n top

finally i'll be able to finish following the progress of this grow! i got very disappointed when i saw the gc thread deleted.... i checked that thing like almost everyday lol