WAVIEN COLLARS: This part bugs me.....

So they’re “available” from several places, technically…
The small one can be extracted from the Marinebeam flashlight:

Unfortunately they aren’t allowed to sell them individually, and they don’t have the medium or large sizes anymore.
I asked them if they would sell me some for university research and they said they would check with the patent owner for me (Meadowstar), however it’s been a month since then and no news yet.


Projector back-reflectors can be ordered from places like this but will likely cost a lot of money, and they are also huge, like 6-12”

If you have access to some diamond hole saws or cutting discs, or EDM wire cutting, you cound get something like this and slice the top off to get a collar:
http://www.optolife.com/diy_projector_lens/M074.html


The final option is to get Phoenix Electroforms to make some custom collars for us.
It would have to be a group buy, because making the mandrel will cost ~$1500 upfront, however it would be less than $50 per collar and they would give a discount for large quantities so possibly down to maybe $25 per collar (for something about 1” diameter)

Factually Enderman I sit corrected. MarineBeam merely licenses the collar from Meadowstar Enterprises of East Meadow, NY., as stated in their Product Description.

Maybe one can talk directly with them first since MarineBeam really IMO shouldn’t be in the middle unless there’s sum exclusivity arrangement with them and Meadowstar.

What I really want is a collar with a smaller opening than 60 degrees, less lumens but more intensity for use with longer focal length lenses.

PS- the reason I made a WTB thread is because I don’t like taking apart old projects to build new ones, and I will 100% need a collar for my next project.
Also I dropped my large collar from like 2m high, luckily it didn’t break, but it scared the crap out of me and it would be nice to have extras :slight_smile:

Well let me ask you this. What kind of numbers could you achieve?

I believe what prevents Chinese from making their own collars is obscurity more than legalese. But I may be wrong.
Making a similar device as a simple aluminium reflector is simple and cheap. Not as good as the original, but way better than nothing.

This is a cheap price, and it’s not that hard to cut glass even with a Dremel.
I already cut some ZWB2 UV filter just with a standard cutting disk and then a grinding drum on my Dremel.
I would try it :slight_smile:

No idea, because it’s a non-linear increase per angle of light collected.
And the only “collars” tested so far have all been 60 degrees opening.
60 degrees is pretty good, allows for a reasonable focal length, and doubles the intensity, but it could be more than 2.2x if the opening was smaller.
If I could get a custom collar made by phoenix I would test stuff like 30 or 15 degrees to see what the trend is like.

Don’t really have a spare $2k at the moment though, and I doubt there would be hundreds of people interested in a group buy of a $50 reflector, this is budgetlightforum after all.

“This is a cheap price, and it’s not that hard to cut glass even with a Dremel.
I already cut some ZWB2 UV filter just with a standard cutting disk and then a grinding drum on my Dremel.
I would try it Smile”

I think X3 may be on to something principally becuz doing the rough top cut shouldn’t be difficult but most importantly the center hole can then be micro-incrementally sized/centered as you see fit. I think that’s huge.

Prolly need a real machinist like a MrsDNF or VoB to chime in here perhaps. IDK.

Of course 64mm-68mm may not be there to begin with for what you’re trying to achieve either. But as you say establishing a trend could make even those restrictive sizes useful.

Good to know I can cut glass with a regular dremel tool.
I would probably put the cutting tool on a mill at high rpm and then just go really slow to slice the top off.
And yes, slicing at different heights would give different size openings :slight_smile:

The only problem is that (based on the images from optolife) that focal length number is in front of the reflector, not the actual focal length of the reflector.
If you take a close look you can see that it’s not a perfect hemisphere, and if it was the 68mm diameter would make no sense, because the focal length should be half the diameter (not including the thickness).
So yeah, maybe I need to keep looking for true hemispherical reflectors.

They are really cheap though, maybe I could use them for testing regardless.
Not a lot of light is emitted at those extreme angles anyway.

Never mind, I found more spherical reflectors! Just on a different part of the site:
http://www.optolife.com/front_surface_mirrors.html

They’re really cheap, it’s worth to try it IMO :smiley:

Yeah I’m just confused about how the diameter is 4x larger than the focal length :stuck_out_tongue: it shouldn’t be much more than 2x the focal length (aka radius)

Also more spherical reflectors here, but none that make a perfect hemisphere, they are all slightly less: http://en.hb-optical.com/products_detail/productId=145.html

Next time I order form optolife I’ll get a bunch of different spherical reflectors to test out.
The products are cheap but shipping isn’t :stuck_out_tongue:

I see that Optolife can give a quote for custom. Hmmmm.

I think I saw a Raymond who’s online there. Maybe ask him why diameter vs focal doesn’t jibe?

I was confused about this too. According to this, focal length is half radius.
So optimal mirrors should have diameter close to 4x FL. So M026 is the only one looking good.
Quite big.
Well, maybe M048 would work OK too? Loses a lot of mirror area, but only in places of low intensity. Enderman, can you calculate light collection?

BTW, any hint on shipping costs?

ADDED:
I can’t help but wonder how much would cost M048 extended to full or near-full half-sphere, with factory-cut hole and cold mirror coating if we made a GB

You don’t really need a full hemisphere no ? I mean, your emitter is not efficient on 180° anyway ?
I can’t understand how the focal length can be different than the radius of the sphere :person_facepalming:

Obviously, if you put an emitter in the middle of the sphere, it bounces all light back.
But they try to do something different, to make parallel beam as if the mirror was parabolic. It somewhat works at small angles and not at all at higher ones, but is good enough to make a definition. And it turns out that according to that definition, the focal length is half radius.

In a true sphere/hemisphere/quarter-sphere/whatever… the focal length is the radius, because the focal point is exact center of the sphere. Anything else is not a sphere (or portion thereof). But, since these are reflectors, maybe there is some amount of extra material extending beyond the spherical portion?

Ok, so if you took a mirror-like Christmas tree glass ball decoration and precisely cut it in half, bored out/sliced off the existing hole where it hangs from the branch, you essentially could have a Wavien Collar?

Sounds too easy ’cause I’ve inadvertantly must’ve created about 2,000 of these over the course of my fumbled fingered years of trying to hang my delicate balls!!!

Glad I could be of tremendous help. :laughing:

On a serious note, I could conclude that what the Chinese call ‘spherical’ for this particular application is only an approximation to true spherical and is perhaps more relative to whatever type light source’s overall total exposed distance from the Wavien surface. These are used for projectors, no? I’m also thusly thinking mainly halogen type vertically constructed bulbs here.

Looks like the focal length is longer than the radius of the published diameters is because these are not full half spheres. So it appears the published diameters are of the product and not the actual spherical diameter. Here is diagram from one of the products:

Yup, I thot it looked ‘off’ just by the photos but I didn’t want to burst Endy’s bubble so soon.

What about taking your standard 100 watt incandescent bulb and slicing away on that?

Remember we’re also trying to help him establish a trend here. Bore hole dimension for solely testing purposes are transferable to whatever config he builds. One hopes. My biggest concern is then just how precise things have to overall be from test hemispheres to prototypes to then final product.

’Course what do you coat the inside of an incandescent bulb with to get an evenly applied mirror coat? Hmmmmm.

Powder coatings can be pretty precisely evenly applied I know that much. :student: