BLF recoil über-thrower

I made some nice and grainy shots facing the light from about 20 meters away, light on extremely low power of course:

Left is taken from left, middle from the middle and right from the right of the hotspot.
I conclude the outer perimeter of the parabola reflects too much inward, the ring section inside that is okay, inside that one seems to reflect a little too much outward, the middle is okay.
(The most outward perimeter is not parabolic but flat so that does nothing at all.)

Yeah looks like a bad parabola, that's unfortunate. You're getting the same effect that djozz got with the outer part of the parabola focusing inwards.

It should still work alright for a handheld flashlight, but probably won't get 1M lux :/

Yeah, that sucks a little…

[quote]

…and then a ring that’s okay, and than a ring that reflects outward, and then another change in angle…
Considering glueing rings on the back pushing and pulling it in shape, but…

Not sure it’s worthwhile to continue with it.
As a mirascope it’s not much good either…

http://www.ebay.de/itm/Experimente-Solar-mit-Parabolspiegel-Solarzellen-6in1-Modellen-/201159295539?hash=item2ed6074233:g:uFoAAOxy3zNSh6Xl

Amazon zigarette lighter parabol mirror

Maybe those parabol mirrors might work

From what I can tell, solar collectors are far less accurate since they don’t need to project a perfect image, they just need to focus light to a small area more or less, not a perfect point.
Even spherical reflectors will accomplish this.

I would only use a solar reflector if it is really large, like 12 or 24” and up, where the accuracy matters less.
For small sizes you need really accurate stuff, such as an electroformed or glass reflector.

I think the mirascope was the best bet :confused:
Not sure if I want to spend $50 to get a 9” mirasope shipped to me from the US and hope for better luck… I will have to reconsider.

I ordered the 7,4€ mirror from amazon

Ok cool, post results when you get it! :smiley:

cigarette lighter thing for $ 2.59

http://www.ebay.com/itm/252506465720?\_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

But it’s very shallow…

Judging by the reflection, I think it looks pretty good actually on the ebay picture, I ordered two to play with. And I tend to think shallow is good, it catches a 90 degrees cone which is quite perfect.

It’s on my wishlist for a while now, it didn’t convince me…
But i just ordered one too. :slight_smile:

So I found out that parcan bulbs use parabolic reflectors (hence the “par” :stuck_out_tongue: ) and there are a bunch of burnt out bulbs at my old highschool.
Hopefully some time soon I can go there and pick up a few and crack the front lens off.
The reflector is glass and should be a very good parabola, and iirc it’s also a pretty shallow reflector.

If I can crack the front lens off without breaking the reflector I will be sure to post some pics of testing here :slight_smile:

Hey, yeah, i’ve been considering pars lately too.
Discouraged by the fact that the lens is one with the reflector though…

Two separate pieces of glass but melted together. I would think the weld is the weak spot.
There’s at least 5 dead bulbs though so I will have multiple shots at it, I can try smashing, cutting, all kinds of stuff xD
It might take a few weeks for me to find time though, so let’s see how that solar reflector works out first :slight_smile:

I’d say cutting is your best bet, unless you have a heat source capable of melting the glass off. Just make sure you use eye protection and breathing protection of some kind.

Found this in a vintage shop, russian, fifties, with a 35cm parabolic glass mirror in good condition.
LOL, it is labeled as a ‘flood light’, which is correct where the bulb is mounted now . Minor set-back: €795,- did not buy it.

lol those vintage lights so overprice for their capabilities…

Say Djozz emailed about a recoil thrower before the GT was started
I really hope you guys are going to make this a reality
If you ask Thijsco it’ll be an all Dutch team!

Is there a topic he made? When I was researching this a few years ago I found no LED recoil flashlight builds on any forum or website…

No, I never made one before. And I was bragging about building one two weeks ago, but with my extreme short attention span I skipped it for the moment in favour of other mods and experiments. I is on the list though, and of a few other folks as well.

The idea seems to be at the moment to do some experiments with existing cheap mirrors to see if a good quality recoil thrower is possible. If yes, it would be awesome to have it made in China. But I have little illusions about the process: having something made that is mostly a copy of what already exists (the Q8) is already very tedious, this one will be a new design from scratch!

The best that may happen is that with a prototype (well: contraption) we prove that a great compact 500+ kcd recoil thrower is possible, and that one of the flashlight manufacturers is reading this thread and picks it up and brings it to the market (Thrunite?)

Tbh I don’t care about prototypes or manufacturers, if it throws I will build one from scratch.
The problem is I don’t want to drop $200+ on a custom reflector not knowing how well it will work.
It needs to at least match my 1Mcd aspheric thrower…otherwise it will not be worth the cost.