Is it a good idea to DIY my own HLG 600 or HLG 550?

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kdt15

Active Member
a 550 is 1050$: horticulturelightinggroup com/products/hlg-550
a 600 is 723$: growerslights com/collections/led-grow-lights/products/horticulture-lighting-group-600h-quantum-board-led-kit


odd that the 550 is more expensive than 600.

Anyways, would it be way cheaper/simple enough to make my own HLGs like the above? Are there any reasons not too / is it signficantly hard or many obstacles in doing so?
 
coreywebster

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
I run the a couple of the 260w kits and bought them when they were still $285 a pop, seems to be similar performance for what was at the time a lot cheaper than the 550. . I think the 600 is a kit and the 550 isn't? You can knock of $49 off the 600 by assembling it yourself. which is piss easy.

It shouldn't be difficult to knock your own up but not sure how much you would save. Simple enough to price up all the parts needed on HLG though.
 
K

kdt15

Active Member
coreywebster said:
I run the a couple of the 260w kits and bought them when they were still $285 a pop, seems to be similar performance for what was at the time a lot cheaper than the 550. . I think the 600 is a kit and the 550 isn't? You can knock of $49 off the 600 by assembling it yourself. which is piss easy.

It shouldn't be difficult to knock your own up but not sure how much you would save. Simple enough to price up all the parts needed on HLG though.
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to be honest im not sure what the differencei s between that kit and the normal 550. a kit = DIY? also, where did you get the 49$ off figure by DIY on the 600 from?

lastly, good to hear that it was easy. did you have any experience building things, and is there a guide to follow that would lead me in the right direction in terms of learning DIY for this?
 
coreywebster

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
kdt15 said:
to be honest im not sure what the differencei s between that kit and the normal 550. a kit = DIY? also, where did you get the 49$ off figure by DIY on the 600 from?

lastly, good to hear that it was easy. did you have any experience building things, and is there a guide to follow that would lead me in the right direction in terms of learning DIY for this?
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I didn't have any experience building this sort of thing until I jumped into the DIY COB world. I built my own set up for half my flower tent. It wasn't very difficult but it took me a while to get my head around matching drivers to cobs ect. Mostly it was just buying aluminium L shape lengths and riveting them together to support the heat sinks. Much the same for the QB DIY set up but a whole lot simpler.
You can check out growmau5s vids on youtube, I'm sure he has some elaborate builds that you can see. But the thread DIY quantum boards should have some information also. There are plenty of folk on here that have built their own COB set ups and some that have built their own QB set ups.

If you look on here
https://growerslights.com/collections/horticulture-lighting-group/products/horticulture-lighting-group-600h-quantum-board-led-kit

and scroll down there is an option which says pre assembled and tested +$49, its automatically set to yes, just click it to no and you save that $49.

I put my 260w kits together, on the HLG site they have a video link showing how to assemble, I think they have one for the 600 kit.
The 260w kits take 5mins to assemble. Really nothing to it, just need some wire strippers and a small screwdriver. The 600 kit will be much the same.

Weirdly the HLG 550 does have the same board efficiency as the 600 but with the 600 your getting a 100w extra, or at least that's how it looks to me.
BTW on that link above it lists exactly what you get with the kit, so you can price up individually from HLG, I really don't think you would save much though. That 600 kit is amazing value for money already. I don't think those kits will stay that price either.
 
coreywebster

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
All you do with a QB kit is screw the boards to the heat sink, screws and holes are provided, screw in 4 little rubber feet so the leds are not getting touched while your have it on a flat surface, wire the plug for the driver, poke in the wires connecting each board to the other, You need to strip those wires with wire strippers, poke in the driver wires to the positive and negative connectors and then clip on the light hanging cables and its done. :bigjoint:
 
K

kdt15

Active Member
coreywebster said:
All you do with a QB kit is screw the boards to the heat sink, screws and holes are provided, screw in 4 little rubber feet so the leds are not getting touched while your have it on a flat surface, wire the plug for the driver, poke in the wires connecting each board to the other, You need to strip those wires with wire strippers, poke in the driver wires to the positive and negative connectors and then clip on the light hanging cables and its done. :bigjoint:
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Thanks Corey! The kit that hlg provides sounds easy enough then! Have you considered a full diy with China parts as suggested above? I wonder how much off the 1000$ price can be saved to see if it's worth the effort
 
coreywebster

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
kdt15 said:
Thanks Corey! The kit that hlg provides sounds easy enough then! Have you considered a full diy with China parts as suggested above? I wonder how much off the 1000$ price can be saved to see if it's worth the effort
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Yeah they are really simple to put together.
I haven't tried building my own QB set up from parts sourced elsewhere. I haven't needed to because I have all the lights I need for now.
There have been a few that have sourced similar boards from other Alibaba sellers. Some when tested seemed to be not the diodes promised and some seemed to be legit.
I have built my own COB set up which I sourced the citizen diodes from HLG and sourced the drivers and heat sinks from kingbrite on Alibaba. It turned out the diodes would of been the same price so I went to HLG. But the heat sinks in particular were cheaper for me (been in England) to get from china.
As far as the above company and price difference you will have to message them and get a price list. :eyesmoke:
 
K

kdt15

Active Member
ledgardener said:
Here are the steps I took to build an HLG 550 out of the components:
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hey! i actually recall seeing that video. great channel you have :)

did you have a list of overall costs/savings and where you bought everything for your video? i was hoping to cut more into the 1000$ price tag than just "a few bucks" (i think thats what you said in the video :P)
 
ledgardener

ledgardener

Well-Known Member
kdt15 said:
hey! i actually recall seeing that video. great channel you have :)

did you have a list of overall costs/savings and where you bought everything for your video? i was hoping to cut more into the 1000$ price tag than just "a few bucks" (i think thats what you said in the video :P)
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Nice! I did run the numbers once and it was significant savings. I want to say the total came to like 600-700 bucks using components.
 
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