Custom Made Scrubbers

[Floyd R Turbo]

Define outlandish. Prices have gone up over 50% in the last year or so due to China hoarding and various materials and causing manufacturer to declare force majure. Not just in the plastics industry, every industry.

[kentth]

Try a local owned glass and screen shop, someone who repairs windows. They normally have a scrap box, and will either give it to you or at a greatly reduced price. We have a couple in town and I can almost always find what I need. Big projects, I buy sheets from them, they usually will make single cut and sell it to me as bulk. One of the shops uses Weldon 3, so they have a can open, they will let me have it over the weekend and only charge me for what I use. I find that even if I have to buy it, their prices are better then the box stores.

Kent

[Floyd R Turbo]

Be careful what you get though. Generally you want cell cast acrylic, plexiglas (arkema) brand or a good extruded like Plex-MC or Acrylite FF, maybe Optix/Plaskolite, but never lexan or any polycarbonate it won't bond strong enough

[joelespinoza]

Hmmm I will have to call around to more glass shops, I tried the one on the island a while back but they were totally useless jerks... Speaking of which i guess there is no reason I cant just use spray painted glass instead of plexi.....

[kentth]

Floyd,
Those are the only ones, I usually use. They normally have the paper on them, so you can tell the brand.

Joe, normally I just walk in and ask if they have any scrapes the want to get rid of and then I have a list of what I am looking for. Normally show me where the scrape box is and let me go through it. I also normally tell them what I am using it for.

Kent

[spideybry]

I hear people use that spray so the contacts dont rust over. Even in a covered setup with acrylic, I hear there is significant oxidizing. Just something to keep in mind.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Yep, got that one covered under another thread (the LED guidelines thread)

[Bertie]

Floyd, I am very interested in your complete, least possible DIY needed scrubber II. However, I have a dinky Biocube 29, which I have ripped up to having nothing but a Tunze skimmer in it, as well as 2" or aragonite sand and lots of old live rock.. It still has its original micro-pump, though. If I replace it with your recommended Eheim is the whole little thing going to shake like the underside of a jet engine? The tank is in our small living room. I would also have to interrupt a short hose going up and down with a side-line going left to right (or vise-versa). Is this a problem? As you can see I am quite a newbie. I am willing to pay, however, and willing to wait. My mate, unfortunately, is not willing to vibrate in his sleep. (Unreasonable for those of us with cool enthusiasms, I know, but there it is.) Let me know if there is hope for us in your product.

[Floyd R Turbo]

I'm currently focused on building the 2 cube/day scrubber (see the other thread in this sub-forum) but am working on a few larger designs, 3 cube/day and 4 cube/day.

For anyone interested in something other than the 2 cube version I'm making, I'm willing to design prototypes with the end thought in mind that they will become a standard design.

For instance, the 3 cube/day device would use a standard 10" wide heat sink (which is the largest that heatsinkUSA makes) and might need to be a bit taller, but maybe not. If you were anal about the screen size, it might only work out to be a 2.75 cube/day device, but with LEDs that would probably make up the difference (since the feeding guideline was based for the most part from fluorescent-driven scrubbers).

The 4 cube/day device would either be taller or have multiple heat sinks per side that are bolted together. The reason is that I am trying to keep the heat sinks oriented with the fins vertical for better cooling performance in order to avoid the need for active cooling.

[DennisC]

How many 3W LED's could be fitted to a 10" x 10" heatsink from heatsinksUSA without the need for the use of a fan?

Dennis