I wan’t to have a new floodlight / construction light for DIY work around the house and garden.
It must be powerful enough for (inside) paint jobs at night.
It must be portable, but not for travel.
And it must be a cheap.
I have owned a couple of different flood lights with claims of 20W to 100W which just aren’t bright enough. Even the more expensive ones from the tool shop are not what I expected.
Now I’m thinking of building my own.
I wanted to share my thoughts before I start building it.
Maybe you guys have got some great ideas because I never really build anything like this.
I have a large 3D printer available and I still have some stuff in my garage (which makes it possible to build cheap, with probably some overkill parts).
Battery
I have an 1000 Wh 4P20S 26650 li-ion battery left from my ebike.
It has a couple of bad cells, but I will dismount is to make my own battery packs of 4P(arallel) and 3S(series) (10,8V nominal power and 12,6V fully charged).
That is 12 x 26650 cells in total, and I want to make 2 or 3 packs.
3600mAh for one cell, so 14400 mAh in total for 1 battery pack
Capable of about 80 Amps continues (because I will never use any over 10 Amps, heat will never be the problem in case of the battery)
This way the battery pack will be 104mm x 78mm and 650mm high (+ some packaging), and will weigh about 1 KG
Light
I also have an unused 12V led-strip of 5 meters. (120 leds/m SMD 3528)
I will use this for my first test build, but I want to buy a more powerful led strip for my final build.
Was thinking of a 5 meter SMD 3528 led strip.
240 leds/m
1500lm/m
20W/m
4000k
12V
Housing
I will wrap this around an aluminium tube with a diameter of 150 mm.
The tube will be about 120 mm high (at least) for the 5m led strip to fit.
This tube is very light weight and will spread the heat of the led strip a little.
The tube will sit an a 3D printed base plate.
And I will slide over a 200mm polycarbonate satin finished tube for defusing and softening the light.
I want to design a round housing for the battery pack that will fit inside the aluminium tube.
The top will also be 3D printed, and I will mount a Battery Management System and dimmer in the top.
Total height will be around 20 cm.
Total weight about 2 KG
I’ll make a hook on top
I’ll put a nut under it inside the housing to be able to mount it on a tri-pod
Thoughts…
Will this work?
Do I need any cooling for the led strip?
Any other suggestions? Better led strips to use? Or other design features to make it better?