Well I am hoping this can get off the ground before Christmas, I am about 3 months on this project. I have been screwing around with the light bar, inspecting the spot lenses and I discovered that the spots are not sitting at the proper elevation over the LEDs themselves, they need to move up 1mm+, the machined housing will take care of that, but it should focus the spots better than they are now (…tape 
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I also decided for the sake of science to de-dome all of the LEDs on the light bar just to see, and I found out that it sucks! First, it dropped the tint to about the low 4000’s k temperature, and it seems like it dropped the lumens in half! (although it could be observational illusion) I did not expect it to have such an impact on total light output. It does, however, tighten up the spots (and floods) as expected, or rather not so much tighten as it is trimming the size of the beam down while keeping the same intensity, but again, I could be wrong, I should take some pics with the same settings as before to compare. I also decided that it is 5000k tint for me or nothing, it is the ideal color IMO for visibility and eye fatigue. Stay tuned for some beamshots.
From what I’ve seen, the first things to fail due to old age are almost always capacitors. If I knew that it was built with higher quality components & design built to last as long as possible, it’d be worth it to me to pay extra up front. Even though it might be cheap to upgrade to something brighter in a few years, I want to get to the “good enough” point and just enjoy the ride.
That said, I have a mill that needs its servo distribution board serviced with new power resistors and FET. Fortunately the capacitors that it has are huge, and less likely to dry out as smaller caps.
Yes, the electronics in an LED lighting products can be an issue, some cheap components such as capacitors having a life time shorter than the LED itself if stressed too much. Solid ceramic capacitors are a must obviously. Potting the circuits probably helps also, or conformal coating. Millitary grade something we should strive for in any product.
Any updates? Photos! haha
Sorry, been busy. I am going out tonight with the tripod and SLR to take some good photos at various locations.
EDIT: USB cable isn’t working to get photos off camera, have to wait until tonight or tomorrow to post them.
I had a couple different locations, but they didn’t turn out at the first location as we had the camera on the wrong setting and didn’t figure it out until after. These pics were taken with a Sony A58 DSLR on tripod at 55mm on the setting for night scene (w/tripod setting). Most of them are at F/5.6 and 1/2 sec exposure. I still can’t seem to produce good beam shots, I am not sure if it is the settings I am using or the camera that simply cannot capture good night scenes.
So the signs you can see at the end of the road are 1/2 mile away, the bluff of trees on the right side of road are 1100 feet away, and where the road seems to disappear as it levels out after an incline is around 1700 feet.
This is the light bar with complete de-domed XHP-50’s 5000k, although now they are probably somewhere in the 4000 - 4500k tint. PHOTO NUMBER 6 CAPTURES MOST LIKE WHAT I APPEARS IN PERSON.
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BELOW, the tree bluff is 900 feet away. This picture got under exposed as the snow in the for ground would reflect alot of the light.
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Below 2 pictures I held the light bar lower, and lower, respectively.
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Now this picture (BELOW) is of a single XHP-70 de-domed running 12v and 5.5 amps (would be 11 amps if it were a 6v setup). The optic is a LUM 5-90, this thing has THROW! 4 of them would be a serious light bar.
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Wow, do those settings approximate what your eye sees?
You got snow already? burr
3 weeks ago, over a foot of snow, it is almost gone now.
Valorum, photo number 6 is what best approximates what yours eyes see.
Wow, that’s really impressive! I can’t wait for this.
You will notice how soft the beam pattern is, compare this with high end reflector based light bars such as Baja’s onx6 series which has a very sharp beam and field pattern. I don’t care for that kind of beam in a driving light, I want something that is smooth and transitions nicely from far to near field.
Zpinch, about that single XHP-70 DD: How high was it above the ground in that pic? The beam pattern looks close to what I’m wanting for my street van which has high large openings in the grille where a couple of those could mount inconspicuously. The huge steel fascia panel would provide both a solid mounting and some heat-sinking and a wedge-shaped aluminum base could do the primary heat-sinking and aiming for me.
Still following you and your impressive light bar, and though it’s far more than I can use ATM I’m learning a lot from your efforts :+1:
Phil
Sawmaster, the xhp-70 was about 4 feet off the ground.
That’s pretty close to where I’ll be 
Thanks!
Phil
One of the things I’ve wondered about that I kept forgetting to ask about, how is it with your eyes adjusting after you turn the light bar off? Say you’re driving and another driver comes along, you turn it off, are you essentially blind in the dark at this point because it’s so much brighter than your headlights?
I haven’t really tested that Valorum, but with any light that is much brighter than the ambient or in this case the headlights, you are going to have a moment of quite reduced visibility as your eyes don’t adjust instantly. The brightness settings will come in handy because of this fact.
Given equal lumen output my eyes adjust back much quicker when the LED’s are in the 4000-5000 Kelvin range. Those 8000-10,000 Kelvin GlareMasters really pound the eyes.
Is this a handheld light? I searched all over for an enclosure that would fit the LUM 5-90 after seeing Old Lumen’s posts with it. My original idea was a light bar with 4-5 of them in an aluminum enclosure, similar to what you have. If I couldn’t do that, I wanted to try to fit them into something like this:
Yes, kind of, sort of. It is mounted to a copper heatpipe CPU heatsink using AC5 paste.
I am not sure, but the LUM 5-90 might be deeper than that enclosure.
I haven’t worried about it since I saw this thread. I’ve been swayed by your design!