Project Excalibur - Next Generation LED Thrower (many pics) - UPDATE 2018-01-24

Nope, never! I waited years for this to become reality and it has now taken 10 months since the project started. I only had the light for close to two weeks before it broke and haven’t gotten it back yet since it was repaired.

It weighs about half as much as the GT (only three batteries instead of eight, the head is lighter), throws a bit further, has a hotspot 1/5th the size and a much darker spill. It also never overheats and is perfectly regulated with any kind of 18650 until the batteries are empty. The driver of the GT has more U.I. features you can activate and play around with though.

Building another one would cost at least 1500$, probably more. Why would you want that when you can just buy the BLF GT for 1/10th the price and get similar or better performance?

I already have the GT. An amzing light indeed it is. But I just love throwers. I like collecting the best and brightest throwers out there.
I’m still waiting for someone to built a 3/4 million candela super thrower, with a least 6/8 K lumens, any chance you might be working on something like that? Most importantly, is the LED needed for such a project even exist yet?

6000-8000otf lumens with 3Mcd from one LED is currently only possible by combining a Luminus CFT-90 or Cree XHP70.2 with a very large optic or reflector. Those are practically the only LEDs which are that bright. The CFT-90 is the much better suited of the two. It reaches almost the same luminance as the Black Flat I used in my light here, but with 8-times the die size.

I finally have the light back in my hands. Before sending it back Michael also took some "artsy" beamshots. The light is great for long exposure times because of the rather dark spill.

Nobody up there has answered yet...

:slight_smile: They are addictive, the pictures that is. :+1:

It's time for more pictures. The plug in the lens is finally gone!

closer:

even closer...

Here you can see two fine details - the Osram Black Flat is a very thin LED, the Die is lower than that of Cree LEDs. Because of this Michael used especially flat screws and copper sheet metal (insulated with shrink tube) instead of round wires to block the smallest amount of light possible.

What follows is something that I really wanted to do with this light even though it's quite difficult: a picture where the yellow reflection of the LED die fills up the entire reflector (from this point on the real lumunious intensity can be measured because the beam has assumed its final form).

The camera was over 10m (32ft) away.

With 150mm tele

The money shot:

Here the light was dimmed to 1% and the Camera was at its absolute darkest settings (during the day!):

This is what it looks like to be lit up from this distance during the day at max brightness (not very nice):

Amazing flashlight and pictures! A lot of time, effort, and (a little) money spent on a truly one-of-a-kind flashlight. Do you have plans for another one, or are you just going to admire this one for awhile?

Thanks. I don’t have the need or want to have Michael build another one. Also he wouldn’t do it anyhow (it took much longer than anticipated) and I don’t just have spare Maxabeam heads lying around. :wink:

Now that is a flashlight and one tough mod. Michael is very talented guy.

Still missing were the dimensions and the wheight:

  • Length: 32.4cm (12.8in)
  • Diameter of head: 14.5cm (5.7in)
  • Diameter of tailcap: 4.9cm (1.8in)
  • Wheight with batteries: 1.445kg (3.2lbs)

Wheight of some of the parts:

  • Head: ~600g (1.3lbs)
  • Body: ~541g (1.2lbs)
  • Tailcap: 103g (3.6oz)
  • Battery holder: 56.7g (2oz)
  • Batteries: 144.1g (5.1oz)

The BLF GT is around 60% heavier, mainly because of its five additional batteries and the material around them.

Time for more beamshots. I'm getting gloser to my goal of 2.6km (1.62mi) beamshots.

To make these shots seem more realistic they need be viewed in fullscreen mode on a large monitor in a dark room. This way much more detail can be seen.

544m(1785ft):

Tele:

498m(1634ft):

Cell-phone beamshot very close to the light (makes the beam look wide):

1700-1800m (1.06-1.12mi)

Tele (overexposed by a lot):

A darker target next to the building (1500m - 0.93mi) (with my own eyes I couldn't see this being lit up):


2100m (1.31mi) (the mast, the lit up castle is around 4.8km away):

Great job. Beautiful light.

Show them direct comparison with 300 kcd Brinyte you have?

This?

It's a bit too close actually, the beam of Excalibur isn't fully formed yet.

I thought on some fresh outdoor pics. Lets say 200 meters or less distance?

It is clear even from close pic that candela difference.

It might take me a while, it's cold currently . Here's a gif comparing it with my 330kcd Brinyte. I used the old beamshots ("only" 1.5Mcd) and brightened the pics a bit to make viewing them during daytime easier.

Distance: 280m

Crazy :slight_smile:

Very impressive project, love how the maxabeam head is so well integrated into the body, like it was always meant to look like that :slight_smile:

I am a big fan of long throwing lights, there is nothing like putting a spot of light over a mile away, i have a Gen3 Maxabeam and you can pretty much put a spot of light on anything the eye can see.

So 12-13 milion candelas?

That's a lot of work. The Maxabeam needs to measured in around 100m distance to get accurate values.

EDIT: here are some new 50m (164ft) beamshots, again with the 330kcd Brinyte. Unfortunately there are overexposed by too much. The hotspot of the Excalibur is blown out.