No problem! I’ll do my best to answer any and all of your questions.
At that current they don’t really need anything, but if you put them on some aluminum it will pull some heat and they’ll perform a little better. I usually mount them to aluminum Using two sided heat transfer tape. Keeps from having to drill and bolt.
You should be able to put them just about anywhere. Not really sure how they would do if it’s so humid there’s condensation on them though, never had to deal with that. Probably fine if it was a short term thing.
The setup itself will pull about 40 watts from the wall. If you were to mount them together to create a single lamp, I would expect it to be competitive with a standard amazon panel of about twice the power consumption.
You will need some sort of plug or cord with a male end on it to power driver.
On the driver output to led, I usually use 18awg solid conductor hook up wire. It’s not the only thing you can use though. At 350ma output you could use smaller wire if you already have something laying around. You could also go bigger, but you’ll want to make sure it’s small enough to fit in the connectors.
Those strips won’t necessarily need to be mounted to aluminum, but you certainly can. It will help the performance a little. Don’t glue it though. I usually use two sided thermal transfer tape available on Amazon here. Or you can just drill a couple holes and bolt them. Just don’t over tighten if you bolt.
The driver doesn’t need to be mounted to aluminum, but it can be if you want it to. If you decide to mount to aluminum, use a stand off or something so the driver case isn’t heated by it.
Laying out leds can go a lot of ways. What size piece of aluminum do you have?
Ha, sorry. Conductor I was just referring to solid over stranded. That type of wire is referred to as hook up wire is all I was saying there.
If you could find a piece of 1/8” aluminum between 6”x12” and 12”x12” or so should be pretty good. You could go bigger, but there would be some wasted space.
A piece of extension cord works well, I’ve used it several times.
Aluminum is probably best option. You could use copper, but it’s real expensive. Steel doesn’t pull heat like aluminum, and in the size you’re looking for isn’t really much cheaper. But you could use it at that drive current.
You could run them in open air if you find a way to hang them. You really just don’t want to use something like wood or plastic. Neither will help with heat, and woul actually fight the cooling that natural air flow would do.
Since I ordered six of the Bxeb-L0280z-35e1000-c-b3 is there a driver out there that would work with the six? Also how do you know what driver can go with what strip and so on. I find this very fascinating. I want to learn more so I can always build my own lights.
The driver I did order is not in till the 29th and it only supports 5 strips. In the meantime if we could find a driver that supports six strips and it’s not to pricey I’ll order it.
Only thing I really seen was an hlg-60h-c350a. That will run between 6 and 10 of the gen2 eb strips. It’s about $30 U.S. for what it’s worth, that driver would also include dimming down to 50%.
All I’m doing is checking available output voltage and current of drivers that have proper input voltage. Those strips have typical forward voltage of 19.5 vdc at 350ma. Hooking them up in series the voltage is additive, so you need the 19.5 volts per strip. You could open up drivers by connecting in parallel, but thermal runaway is more of an issue doing that way. I’d prefer not to burn your crib lol.
Sweet! First thing you’re gonna need to do is get those strips mounted to the plate. Not sure what you were planning there? Bolting or did you get some of the thermal transfer tape?
With that amount of strips over that space even should be fine. I would keep them from the very edges though, so the lips on the plate don’t interfere with the light. Or mount the strips on the other side. Up to you either way.
Do you plan on mounting driver to top of the plate? I would mark out where you want strips to go first and then drill holes to mount driver. If you do that, throw a washer or something between driver and plate.
Was going to use the two way tape on the driver as well. It’s not that heavy and it will be on the top. I’m assuming that I put all the strips the same way @dbrn32
i would put driver towards middle to keep it somewhat balanced. With the driver output side towards the end of leds you want to do your wiring. You only need to wire at one end of the led, you can leave other end of connectors open.
