My L.E.D. light, complete at last

[Nigel Goodwin]

Didn't the Brits send battleships that were made of aluminum or magnesium to the war in Venesuala's islands? And the aluminum or magnesium caught fire? Hee, hee. :lol: They should have been made of wood, for more smoke.

I'm glad to see you colonials have been paying 'some' attention, but it was the Falkland Isles, and Argentina :lol:

As I understand it the ships were the current practice of the times they were built?, presumably Canadian and American ones have similar construction? - it was Aluminium by the way. 'Caught fire' is hardly the correct term either, 'struck by a dirty great big French missile' would be more accurate 8)

 

[jrz126]

wow, you guys really like to ruin people's threads with politics, first my elctro-tech map thread and now Zach's awsome LED thread...

Anyhoo, What exactly do the collimating optics do? is it just for focusing the beam? and are they really needed?

I'm thinking about getting this one **broken link removed**
well that link doesnt work...so I'm planning on getting one of the Red and Cyans from this page.
http://www.lumiledsfuture.com/products/family.cfm?familyId=8
with the Lambertian radiation pattern

now which collminator will I need and can I order it (the collminator) directly from this site?

 

[Oznog]

Anyhoo, What exactly do the collimating optics do? is it just for focusing the beam? and are they really needed?

now which collminator will I need and can I order it (the collminator) directly from this site?

Collimator optics are necessary since without it the radiation pattern is quite unfocused and thus it is not a useful flashlight. If you'll look at the Lambertian and Batwing radiation patterns on the Luxeon spec sheets you'll see just how broadly they throw light. Compare that to some common T1 3/4 LED pkgs which focus tightly over 20 deg or less.

Those optics are designed to best utilize the Luxeon emitter's output spread, cast it all forward and in focus. Yes you can order it from the same site: http://www.lumiledsfuture.com/products/optics.cfm

Which one? First off obviously you need a collimator labelled for "Batwing" with a Batwing emitter and vice versa. But have a look at this spec sheet comparison: **broken link removed**

Note that Batwings (with a Batwing optic) focuses significantly better than a Lambertian with a Lambertian optic. Thus I would recommend you select a Batwing rather than Lambertian part. For a flashlight, I'd generally say tighter focus is better. Note you will need a ring spacer or heat stake to fit these lenses in place, make sure you get one with the lens or order one separately.

Be aware a 3W LED, even mounted on a Star, does not have enough cooling to operate at 3W inside a flashlight without overheating the junction. 3W and 5W devices need to have a signficant thermal connection to a sink with a larger thermal dissipation. In the case of a flashlight this will need to be the case.

Many have noted the Star is very ill designed to fit into a cylinder and make this kind of thermal contact. Sucks since everyone wants to make flashlights! What I think a lot of people do is make a thick slug out of aluminum bar stock, mount the Luxeon emitter itself (not a Star) to it, and mate it up inside an aluminum cylinder. The difficulty is the back of the emitter is not electrically neutral and usually flashlights ground the case. You can either not ground the case- use an insulated separate wire for the batt negative and route it up to the front- or use insulating heatsink epoxy and be very careful to maintain isolation when attaching it. I've been able to do that ok. Arctic Silver works great. You mix it up, apply a dab to it, and apply the emitter carefully without pressing down too hard. The Arctic stuff is an insulator but if it's squished too hard out of the way the metal will still touch. You can check your results with an ohmmeter and you go to make sure you maintain isolation.

 

[Styx]

Didn't the Brits send battleships that were made of aluminum or magnesium to the war in Venesuala's islands? And the aluminum or magnesium caught fire? Hee, hee. :lol: They should have been made of wood, for more smoke.

And didnt the Canadians recently get conned into buying a decommisioned sub from us Brits, that later caught fire at sea.

Turned out it was Human error on behalf of the Canadian seamen
https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4518423.stm

leaving a hatch open :roll:




P

 

[Oznog]

I would like to create a sort of Lojack system that will allow the rightful owners to retrieve a thread which has been jacked. Anybody wanna help with that board design?

WORST THREADJACK EVAR

 

[audioguru]

A Cmos transmission gate like a CD4051, 4052 or even a 4053 would allow a moderator to easily move Lojack off-topic chatter to ****-chat or to the recycle bin. :lol:

 

[Someone Electro]

MOSFETs also work for that?

 

[audioguru]

I think transmission gates are better than Mosfets for moving stuff around.

Don't tell the moderator, 'cause the transmission gate I recommended is bi-directional, so Lojack off-topic chatter that is moved away from a thread can easily sneak back in. :lol:

 

[Someone Electro]

Oh ok

What dose that "!" button doo. im gona try it out.LOL :lol: Just a joke.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

What dose that "!" button doo. im gona try it out.

It sends a message to the moderators!.

 

[jrz126]

I wasnt really planning on making a flashlight, but I think I'll order stuff for one anyways...Let me see if I got this striaght...I need to order:
an LED with the Batwing pattern.
a collminator for a batwing.
and a spacer to mount the collminator.

Now that link you provided for the collminators...can I order one from that page? I dont see anything on how to order them.

 

[zachtheterrible]

IIIIIIIMMMM BAAAACK :lol:
I went and spent the weekend at my cousins where he didn't have internet :evil:

Pike, ill make sure to take a picture of my truck with my portable floodlight.

An update on the flashlight: Strangely enough, the brightness stayed the same for about 10 hours (and this was on batteries that were already at 2.9V I might add), then the brightness went down a notch and has stayed the same. The flashlight has been on since friday at 10:00AM. It is now Sunday at 7:00PM. I think that the circuit that I have just sucks because there are loose connections and shorts and stuff. I really need re-design it.

It fits in the flashlight very easily actually. When being driven at 500mA, good god that thing gets hot, so hot I can't even hold my finger on it for more than a second. Audio, I think you might be right because those readings just don't make sense.

This is the LED that I got: http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=340500&item=LED-110&type=store
Since the heatsink is a circle and not a star, it is very small. I'm sure the dimensions are on that page.

Take a look here: http://www.hebeiltd.com.cn/?p=z.pricelist.led.diode
1W LEDs for only $2!!

I'm still working on perfecting this thing. When it is done and perfected, I will give a detailed explanation in the projects section on how to convert a maglite to the perfect LED light.

And thanks for lowjacking my thread :lol:

 

[Oznog]

That hebeiltd site looks great! Almost too good to be true but I don't see telltale signs of fraud. Shipping's a bit slow but the price isn't too different from domestic orders.