DIY Offroad LED Light Bar

Awesome project, congratulations !
I love the shape, minimalist design yet great functionality !
Did you have any problem with the russian drivers ?
I use on to feed my motorcycle auxiliary lights and find pretty reliable.

Amazing build! Love the slim form factor.

thank your for sharing this amazing first post. welcome to BLF!

Very epic build with great results :beer:

You might want to take a look here. They top out at around four times that current.

Maybe a driver upgrade will be in the works :wink:

Welcome to BLF!

Heatsinking would then be a problem…
I think that 2A is a good conservative choice :slight_smile:

For sure, but a more capable driver with several output levels would be interesting.

…just keep the speed up on the highest level for forced cooling :sunglasses:

Wow I wish I’d seen that earlier! I didn’t know the spec’d drive current could be exceeded on a continuous operating basis. The drivers will go to 3A with a sense resistor change. The heat sink will probably be insufficient, but I’ll set up a test and find out. I might be looking at excessive losses in the 14ga 12ga wire from the battery too.

Yeah, you could probably increase that wire size several gauges higher, and go ahead and up the current to 3A max. Since you’re using DTP copper MCPCB’s I don’t think that would be a problem. But then again, I could be wrong. I’m looking forward to results from your testing! :partying_face:

Thanks for posting, build threads are the best :crown:

That is pretty darn AWESOME.
Very nice work. You have plenty of heat sinking to drive those emitters pretty hard.

No. Build quality is good. All worked. I fried two playing with their PWM hookups, but that was my fault. I ordered three batches. Took about 4 weeks to deliver each time.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-pieces-LED-driver-LD-3A-3A-12V-DC-5V-27V-for-CREE-XHP50-XP-L-XM-L-L2-/112461382388?hash=item1a2f3882f4

Not yet. Many projects in the queue still.

Actually I think the vertical beam angle could be narrower. I’d like less light on the ground in front and more in the distance, so I bought some XQ-E Hi emitters to test. With the same lenses, they should get more Cd per lumen and the vertical should decrease from 13 to 8 degrees, per Carclo.

This bar might be obsolete very soon.

Man what a sweet build!
Welcome to BLF. I can’t explain how but someone reading here certainly can tell you how to set up your high beam vs. El Jefe shots either as an alternating GIF or even cooler is the hover-over trick so when you hover over it with your cursor it switches between high beams and El Jefe. It doesn’t matter if you do that or not it just sounds cool. Anyway, well done. I love the stealth factor. That straight on shot looking into it looks awesome. Looks literally like one solid bar of light. :+1:

It’s long, thin and cute :heart_eyes:
Awesome work
Thank you for sharing

Like this:

You can use Animated GIF Maker

Nice light and some good welding.

Wow this is super sweet.

Great idea! Done and done.

Nice!

Way to take advice and go beyond. :+1:

The smooth transition is a very nice touch. :+1: :+1:

This is truly awesome! I’ve been wanting to do some DIY lightbar for a while now with all the available options being extremely expensive or just plain crap.

Do you have a link for the optics?