Alzo 300 LED light

Yeow! That's a lot of heat sink. You will most likely compromise the life of the light by changing fans. They put the best design together and didn't want to make it any louder than they had to. By using a more quiet fan, you will most likely lower the air flow and raise the temperature of the LED and compromise it's life.

But... considering the lifetime of these LEDs, if they did a proper design, and you do a slight compromise, it will still last a long time.

Yes, you can use a three wire fan on a two wire system. The third wire is usually a tachometer output used to detect that the fan has failed.

Finally, that heatsink will need maintenance. Unless they filter the air coming into the light case, those fins are so tight together, they will act as a filter and the fins will get clogged with dust. Then it will get hot and fail.
 
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I've ordered the replacement fan, an Arctic F9 rated for 43 CFM at a significantly lower RPM (1800). I couldn't find specs on the air pressure, but I'm hoping that the 9 blade design pushes as much as the 7 blade ADDA. I was getting a reading of 9-10dB increase (over ambient) at 2 meters. If I could knock this down by half without compromising the longevity of the unit, I would be fine. The way I figure, this is not a unit I will be running into the ground. New technology comes along that both improves the CRI and efficiency, and eventually, this will be sitting idle.
 
Another update (if anyone still cares at this point). My F9 fan arrived DOA, so I ran out and got a 100mm Silenx Effizio fan. It's dead silent when installed, but only pushes 36CFM at it 1200RPM. I did an install and ran the Alzo 3200 at various intensities during a 2 day shoot. At the lower intensities, the unit stays cool. At max, it warms up more than I'm comfortable with. I'm hoping the replacement F9 allows me to run at full intensity without the worry. Either way, it's so silent, that I can actually hear the high-pitch buzz of the electronics (at some intensity settings). Not enough to disturb audio capture...but quite the change from the stock fan's ruckus. Pix are attached of the unit in action and resulting images. LOMA Still 8.jpgLOMA Still 13.jpgP1940966.jpgP1940978.jpg
 
You can't judge if the temperature is ok or not without measurement. Silicon can feel hot even when running correctly. The only way to find out what is really going on is to do a comparison of the temperature with the factory fan and the new fan. If you have an IR thermometer (available from Harbor Freight for a reasonable price), you can aim it at some point on the heat sink or better yet, the LED case and do a comparison. That will tell you how much hotter it is getting. Then if your are really interested, you can compare that to the data sheet for the LED. You could then probably predict how much you are shortening the life of the LED. That's probably way more work than you want to do and it would not be an accurate predictor anyway unless you get a proper measurement of the LED case temperature, which may not be possible.

The life of LEDs drops off dramatically as you get further from the specified operating temperature. But have fun. Keep us informed. Good stuff.
 
Thanks Paul. I'm crossing my fingers here, since I've already voided the warranty. Hopefully, I don't wind up with an expensive paperweight. Then again, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
 
I read a little more from Cree. They don't like case temperatures to go above 85C (the user must lower the current) and it is certain death above 150C. So if you get an IR temperature sensor and you read those temps, you are in trouble. The other issue is that heat will cause the color to shift. So while the LED may live a while, you will certainly be speeding up the color changes. From Cree, an LED chip manufacturer:

The temperature to which the LED is subjected is a primary contributor to the rate of dislocation production. A hotter chip will form dislocations faster and hence fade quicker. This is a key reason why manufacturers advise keeping the chip’s junction temperature down.
 
Thanks Joe and Paul. I'm hoping to keep those LED temps in check. It seems that they are being overdriven at the max output setting of the Alzo 3200, the lower settings produce significantly less heat. I don't know if it should follow a linear graph (temp/brightness) or logarithmic, but I'll see what I can do to keep them in check. I'm wondering if a closed-loop water cooling system can be incorporated, which would be my ideal solution.
 
I'm seriously thinking of buying the ALzo 3200 or Dot Line RPS 200w. These things kick out a lot of daylight. By the time I gel tungsten for daylight I am blowing fuses to get a good amount of daylight. The fan seems like an easy fix.

My lighting kit has moved to be more specialty lights as most tungsten are super cheap and easy to rent and HMI's still pricey these specialty high output LED lights are nice to have as you can't rent them and they wouldn't survive as rentals.

I was debating on getting either the CDM150 from cool lights or this Alzo 3200. The Alzo is cheaper and puts out more daylight as far as I can tell. Both are compromises to their higher cost siblings.
 
The cool lights 150 kinda beats anything else when you **really** need a fresnel. The LED's that mortals can afford just don't look that pretty, for color and quality of light. But that cool light model is pricey.

If you have a fresnel to convert, I finally found an electronic ballast that strikes the Cool Lights 150 bulb. You need a G12 base in your fixture. Ballast is about $50 but needs a housing.

Here's the ballast, no flicker when tested up to 1/500th. This would work well with some sort of china setup as well, but the bulb requires UV shielding!
 
The reason I'm working hard to make these quieter, is that I really like the look of having the light as close as possible to the talent. This makes for a softer 'wrap'. But that also means that the light is physically close to the boom mic, about 2 ft. away. At that point, the fan noise is more noticeable to me. I know that it can be filtered out, but if a $20 fix can resolve the problem, why not give it a try?
 
Michael Carter said:
The cool lights 150 kinda beats anything else when you **really** need a fresnel. The LED's that mortals can afford just don't look that pretty, for color and quality of light. But that cool light model is pricey.

If you have a fresnel to convert, I finally found an electronic ballast that strikes the Cool Lights 150 bulb. You need a G12 base in your fixture. Ballast is about $50 but needs a housing.

Here's the ballast, no flicker when tested up to 1/500th. This would work well with some sort of china setup as well, but the bulb requires UV shielding!
Click to expand...

I still have the Cool Lights CDM 150 on my radar. I ended up getting the RPS 200w version. I just needed some strong daylight to bounce so a fresnel wasn't important on this job just pure output on household fuses. By the time I spend gelling tungsten to daylight I would be using a ton of whats for little output. We will see how this all works but I can always rent lights if this little 200w LED doesn't work out. Its a fashion style commercial so sound isn't important. I just need cheap daylight sources and work with the window light.
 
I read somewhere that Alzo is looking to update their big LED lights to address the temperature and noisy fan issue, but that was awhile ago. I'm sure eventually we'll get there, but for now, this is a good workaround.
 
Well, the Arctic F9 fan arrived (first one was DOA). It pushes 43cfm at a reasonable 1800RPM. The first fan I put in was dead silent at 1500 RPM, but wasn't pushing enough air. I got readings of 184 degrees farenheit at full power within 30 minutes of use. The F9 is a more reasonable 139 degrees after the same amount of time (although ambient is about 7 degrees warmer now than during the first run). I'm getting pretty fast at swapping out fans, but with all the screws and disassembly and testing, it still took 30 minutes. As it stands, I'm happy with the very light 'woosh' I'm getting that's just barely audible at 6ft. I won't be as stressed about long operational times, unless I'm in a very warm room.
If Alzo finds a better fan or can shoehorn a larger heatsink, I'd love to know about it. If I were them, I would look into turning the exterior housing into a heat sink, or incorporating a closed-loop liquid cooler.
 
I hope it works out for you. It will probably be a bit quieter than mine, so figure on nearly silent operation. Be mindful of the heat though. If you're using it in a warm environment, or where ventilation isn't ideal, I would recommend running it 1 or 2 clicks below full power. It will probably prolong the LED life.

Test that the fan runs before reassembly. I had some odd thing going on with the pin configuration and ended up having to splice in a re-wired 3-pin adapter. The yellow cable on the Silenx (that I thought was RPM feedback), had to be wired to the black cable. Red still went to red. Go figure.
 
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I just missed the courier. Just stepped out for 15 mins to get a coffee and they show up. Its uncanny.

I should get the light tomorrow and will run it for a while on stock settings to get a feel for it before surgery. I'll let you know how it all goes.
 
David W. Jones said:
It's like they are watching us!
Click to expand...

I know and I had just delivered a post project and hour before so I have the rest of the day to play with the new light and its riding around the truck. Its my own fault I like 1 block from the courier headquarters but it always is out on the truck before I remember to call and have them hold it.

I see Alzo sells a fresnel lens/barn door combo for this light (the Also version). I wonder how effective it is or if it even mimics the look of a fresnel. I love all the bowens mount options for light control.
 
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