yea well, just began to look in to DIY LEDs and as a Metal smith I don't have much general understanding of the electric parts, so new ground for me, tho it don't look to complicated, sure I have looked in to em before, who wouldn't like to save some money and be able to get it exactly as you like is`t bad either, but so fare it have only been looking, about the money saving its not that hugh, if you want quality parts and optic on the LEDs aso. you end up paying like 50-70% of what you can buy a panel for (with warranty) so for me the main idea of building one myself would be to get it exactly like I want it and take the savings as pay for the works and lack of warranty
etc. if I want to build a flowering panel similar in output to my first fixture (280W) I would atleast use 300$ and that is before/with out any optic/lenses on it and I can buy the panel with 3 year warranty for like 600$ and choose the spectrum myself, on the DIY I would have to stick to ww/nw/Cw if I want more like adding a few single 630 or 660 nM LEDs the price would fast go up +100$
but sure if you are a electrician or similar and have most wires and tools and stuff and find it fun to make a DIY panel its the way to go, you could really make a killer panel and IMO get to spread out the LEDs better to cover all your grow space and not put +300W in to a small 20x10" panel like most manufactures do (Im sure its the easy and cheap way, but with my experience in LEDs I would find it much more logical to spread em out in a panel that can cover all of your ground)
I might try to go for a small Veg panel, keep it simple and cheap and get some experience, both when it come to building it and getting parts aso
maybe 2x6500K and one 2700K 50W chips one a single heat sink with 3 drivers to run em and see how it works, Im also playing with the idea to make two more similar once to add as side lightning in flowering, but then only use 2700K chips
sumthing like this (tho with 50W chips)
View attachment 2800227
two of them would also make wonders on each side of your panels in your closed Im sure but then agin, its 300W more to run tho make em with just 2x50W each could work in your small space Im sure, so thats only 200W more and still less in total then your 400W HID
Ooh yea almost forgot, my pics of the day
View attachment 2800228
Edit: and no its not my workbench, to messy to show to you, would have cleaned it first then
about the second post of led bridges, and nanites, and flux capisitors, kinda lost me.
