30 watt compact cannon

[Timfish]

I've been meaning to do this project using a small VGA cooling fan for quite awhile.  Years ago seeing how some coral specimens expressed a wide range if colors depending only on intensity gave me the idea of small spotlights to tightly control the light field on a colony.  One of the reasons the idea sat on a shelf was getting around to making a housing. Recently I got with a friend of mine to 3D print the housing and assemble it.  Testing our first prototype I gotta say I'm pretty happy with the size and especially the PAR!  Dimensions are 3" tall and 1 7/8" diameter.

[mFrame]

Nice, let's see it in place and on!

[Timfish]

Here's what it looks like on: 

Initially I'm putting three of these on my rimless system to light up the mangrove.  The mangrove has grown enough it's not getting any light from the LED fixtures and it won't get longer amounts of sunlight until it gets taller.  With 250 PAR at 2' and 550 at 1 foot and a very narrow light field three of these above focused on it should improve it's growth without affecting the corals around it much.

 

Some specifics:

Length 3" Diameter is 1 7/8"

Single 3-up LED star with 6500 Cree XPG2 LEDs

Carclo 16° optics

Luxdrive 1000ma buckpuck type driver.  These have the advantage over other brands in the LED ground can be tied to the power supply ground without hurting the driver.  Some drivers will fry if this is done to them.

VGA heatsink and fan

12 VDC 1.5 amp power supply.

We designed and printed out a small bracket to hold both the LED star and the lens without having to glue down the LED star.  JB Weld works fine for gluing down the star to the heatsink but be carefull not to fill in the holes the lens fits into.