Muckydoo
Carnivorous Plant Addict
So, I to work at an electrical wholesaler.
We get thousands of LED fixtures in, and sometimes they get damaged in shipping.
Normally we toss them into the metal recycling, or the freight company comes and takes them.
I decided to reuse these bent and banged fixtures for my plants!
I picked up a 4 level shelf unit at Costco ~$40 bucks.
Fits 2 1020 trays... almost fits 3... sigh so close, but nope..
I hacked up the fixtures like this..
Took off the side reflectors and cut them in half.
Then planned mounting for the strips and driver.
Drilled some holes and mounted the LED strips.
2 strips on each panel. Driver on the back of 1 panel
And wired in the power. We have light!!
Driver mounted. I used a strip of thermal gap filler under the driver for better heat transfer.
Also a few old heatsinks on the top
I wired on a 50K ohm rheostat to the 0-10v dimming lines on the driver, so it's fully dimmable down to around 10%
Nice option, since the rheostat was under 2 bucks!
All done! Both shelf levels done the same way.
I dimmed them down all the way so the picture wasn't blown out!
After this I'll start a new shelf unit... I have an even better fixture to hack up this time
We get thousands of LED fixtures in, and sometimes they get damaged in shipping.
Normally we toss them into the metal recycling, or the freight company comes and takes them.
I decided to reuse these bent and banged fixtures for my plants!
I picked up a 4 level shelf unit at Costco ~$40 bucks.
Fits 2 1020 trays... almost fits 3... sigh so close, but nope..
I hacked up the fixtures like this..
Took off the side reflectors and cut them in half.
Then planned mounting for the strips and driver.
Drilled some holes and mounted the LED strips.
2 strips on each panel. Driver on the back of 1 panel
And wired in the power. We have light!!
Driver mounted. I used a strip of thermal gap filler under the driver for better heat transfer.
Also a few old heatsinks on the top
I wired on a 50K ohm rheostat to the 0-10v dimming lines on the driver, so it's fully dimmable down to around 10%
Nice option, since the rheostat was under 2 bucks!
All done! Both shelf levels done the same way.
I dimmed them down all the way so the picture wasn't blown out!
After this I'll start a new shelf unit... I have an even better fixture to hack up this time