CatSpeaker's 1st LED Grow

Here's some info on the current cluster I have going on. This my second grow. Might as well be my
first as the circumstances are so different. That grow was 33 years ago.
Started my grow with 11 bag seeds. Zero information on the genetics .
Germination of the first seed was 14 Feb, the other 6 woke up over the week. The rest were no shows.

2 didn't survive sprout stage. Now I have plants P1 to P1d. Using HERB.IQ to track the
grow. You can't improve if you don't have the data. Plants P1 and P1a occupy the same 7 gallon
smart pot, 1b,c, and d are potted individually.
They live in a Hoffman Proline modular enclosure, interior dimensions 23.62" x 23.62" x 78.74"

I have a pair of them, leftovers from other projects, as is most of this current project.
Math has always been a struggle for me. To compensate I started with a over build the shit out
of it to beat the heat, thought process.
Illumination started with 4 of these CXA3070-0000-000N00Z450Fs powered by a
HLG-185H-C1050b. They are mounted on an aluminum plate 9'' x 23" x .5".
On top of that I attached 9 heat sinks out of Dell computers, decent thickness for the copper
contact plate, 3 heat pipes and they weigh just under a pound.
Now add 5 fans and you have light number 1.

I had planned a 2 of these, one using 8 3070s
in two strings to veg and another one using 6 3590-0000-000R00BB30Fs in three strings to
flower, well that was the plan.
Drilled the plate for the Ideal COB holders. Didn't bother with tapping, used stainless steel
torx screws salvaged from trashed hard drives. They threaded right in. I felt it was an
acceptable compromise after watching the video of how to use them, 2.4 - 4.5 in-lb of torque is
very little.
Unfortunately the wiring part of light build was a disaster. I could only get one of the
strings of to 3070s to fire consistently. The other string kept flickering.
Everything I read said that's a sure recipe for wrecking COBs and power supplies so I
shut it down and pulled all the components so I could check them individually.

For this I needed a power supply to run a single COB, off to the FASTECH web site.
Time tics by, plants keep growing under the 4 3070s.
Grow is the garage and temperature management has been an issue from the start
We've had a mild winter where I live so I got away with using a pair of Peet boot dryers
as supplemental heat. Cabinet temp averaged in the low 80s and rh was in the mid to
upper 30s.
The FastTech drivers have arrived and I cycle through all the 3070s from the fucked string. All
good. So it was on me, I suck at COB holder use. Time for plan B I used the FastTech drivers
to build another smaller light, 2 more 3070s mounted directly to the heat sinks, each COB getting its
own driver, this all mounted on an aluminum bar frame. This will be a test platform of sorts.

Interesting and unique design! A copper base and pushing through fins instead of impingement type.

The plants grew, more or less, all of them seem to be pretty stocky, did I have the lights
too close, who fucking knows? At any rate they grew and my 2 x 2 cabinet wasn't big
enough. Remember the modular part? Pulled the side panels off and joined the cabinets.
Now I have enough room, just not enough light. Another 4 COBs go on the second aluminum
plate with Arctic Silver, Kapton tape, and some soldering . Hook it to power and away we go.
Except this panel does not get an additional 8 pounds of heat sinks and fans. Passively cooled these
COBS haven't gone over 105F or 40.5C. Well within the operating range and out went the Peet boot
dryers. Now I have 10 3070s running at 1000mA covering a 7.75 square foot area. During this time
the plants have been repotted twice. The plan is to end up in 7 gallon smart pots. Fucking plans....
From the start plants have been under lights 24/7. Wasn't a matter of choice really, I didn't have
a timer and it was easier to let them run and if the light was going to fail, I wanted it to fail quickly.
Now 58 days from germination and I have a timer, plants are under an 18/6 cycle.

In my excess of paranoia I stripped details out of the images, makes it hard now to correlate images and dates.
More to come, I hear my bong calling.

Did you check the package of your connectors for compatibility?

Those look like ones i've seen around, supposedly for copper to copper connections only. Just a little heads up, they might be different..

Positivity,
I used 18G solid and stranded. The stranded had been tinned.
I may revisit them as I still have the holders and there is always a need for another light.

In for the grow, thought it had been a while since I last grew, you got me beat by about 25yrs

I had plans and then an opportunity was presented, and now I had two more plants.
A pair of Blue Magoo clone mothers, one is relatively healthy if only compared to her sister.
Skinny little branches, look more like twigs. The leaves are tiny. Now I am a weed growing FNG, can I save these plants?

The addition of 2 3 foot scraggly bushes forces me into light building mode and I throw 2 CXA3590s and a CXA3070 on some more slab aluminum, heat sinks, and fans.
Power it with a HLG-185H-C1050b, standardization works, and I have more light.

Where to place these two presents another challenge. The grow is in my garage, the door goes up and down.
So I clean out an old server cabinet and gain a 24" x 20" x 55" grow cabinet #3.

I use those server cabinet frames for all sorts of things around the shop at work. Good show!

Time for an update.
I'm lucky it is only one out of five that grew balls.
The girls are happy to have him out of the cabinet.
This is their first week of 12/12.
They are under 4 different lights. 2 lights are a pair of CXA3590s and a CXA3070, each powered by a Meanwell HLG-185H-C1050b, 30K and one of the CXA3070 50k lights I refer to in a post above. The last is the aluminum frame box from above as well.
I had to move everything around when I went 12/12
Clones are reduced to clone. Weak plant died. The other is doing much better, starting to put on some green, she is stuck in the other cabinets with the tomatoes. She is now on at 18/6, trying to get her to put on some weight before I go to flower.

The rest of the girls are happy and getting healthier.