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Flashlights

Posted: 24 Nov 2011, 21:44
by varikonniemi
What kind of work lights/flashlights do you have? I decided to make a worklight since they leave my hands free to do stuff.

How hard could it be? ;)

Some drawing of scematics, going through available components and one ebay order later, may i present to you the 3200 Lumen baseballcap light:

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It has two series, 1x20W and 2x10W, separately toggleable by switches.

The house seen in the second picture is about 80 meters away, and if one would be standing in ront of it, there would be a clear shadow cast :)

Re: Flashlights

Posted: 27 Nov 2011, 22:49
by varikonniemi
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This is my second led project, this time a flashlight with integrated battery and 50% more power! The switch in front of the handle is a ON/OFF/FLASH switch, and inside the handle is a 30W/60W switch.

I had to design active cooling since the 30W LED emitters heat up quite a lot.

This big boy delivers 4800 Lumens at nominal power. For comparison, thats about the same amount of light as 4-5 high beams on a car put out.

Re: Flashlights

Posted: 27 Nov 2011, 22:57
by oksnoop2
How long will it stay powered?

Re: Flashlights

Posted: 27 Nov 2011, 23:13
by varikonniemi
Currently it draws 2.5A at full power, but will be bumped to 3.6A (full nominal power) once i get some resistors from ebay.

The lipo pack is 5.0 Ah so 2 hours at full power would currently drain the battery completely. However lipos take damage if drained completely, so to be safe 1.5 hours at full power or 3 hours at half power.

Re: Flashlights

Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 00:42
by oksnoop2
That's pretty impressive. Are you you following some sort of tutorial or just making it up as you go along?

Re: Flashlights

Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 05:02
by CompWiz
I've just got one of those Cree XML lights from DealExtreme:
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10W of LED is amazingly bright. The LED is rated at 1000lumen, however this light doesn't drive it at full current.

I've had to order about five more of them after friends and family saw it.

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/eastward-y ... 8650-50512

I replaced the driver it came with with one that would deliver a bit more current. (2800mA vs about 2400mA from the stuck one.) It's not a huge difference, but it had better modes and a PWM frequency high enough to make the flicker undetectable by me when the light isn't running on max brightness.

Re: Flashlights

Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 18:53
by varikonniemi
oksnoop2 wrote:That's pretty impressive. Are you you following some sort of tutorial or just making it up as you go along?
Thanks! I am just making it up according to what excess parts i happen to find. Only the LED emitters are bought for this project.

If you are interested in seeing the schematics of this build visit http://varikonniemi.wordpress.com

Re: Flashlights

Posted: 19 Feb 2012, 15:54
by varikonniemi
I am currently building a 8000 Lumen projector flashlight upgrade of the 4800 Lumen model displayed in my last update.

I will update the complete info here once finished, but if you are interested in the build process i suggest you head over to http://varikonniemi.wordpress.com for more in-depth updates.

Re: Flashlights

Posted: 19 Feb 2012, 20:43
by PicassoCT
I and Satan are currently building on a RepRap.

Re: Flashlights

Posted: 19 Feb 2012, 22:21
by BaNa
AHAHAHAHA YOU DID PARAMOTOR SAILING ON SKIS

SIR I SALUTE YOU

Re: Flashlights

Posted: 20 Feb 2012, 17:34
by Cheesecan
Ah nice, LEDs! :mrgreen: I love them, I used to run a LED company.

Right now there are some mega-uber strong LED arrays
http://www.leds.de/en/High-Power-LEDs/C ... Lumen.html

132lm/W and 792 lm :) There is also a 7900 :!: lumen version with 87lm/W which is not too bad compared to the best models from a few years ago.

I think LED stocks will increase a lot in the coming years, really good to have in an investment portfolio considering they are pretty much poised to take over the entire market sooner or later.

Re: Flashlights

Posted: 20 Feb 2012, 21:41
by varikonniemi
Cheesecan: Thanks for the link to the leds, those look really nice, too bad they are about twice the $ per lumen compared to what i pay. You are correct, LEDs will make pretty much all other kinds of light sources obsolete in the near future.

BaNa: Thanks! :) If you liked that preliminary compilation you found on my blog, then check out the music vid in the other thread.

Re: Flashlights

Posted: 20 Feb 2012, 23:02
by Prominence
PicassoCT wrote:I and Satan are currently building on a RepRap.
I wish I had 3D printer, but not the printers that have big nozzles.