Ervin's try (2nd. Annual BLF Scratch Made Light Contest) update 6/23/2014 finally beam shots of my new thrower

Giveaways and Contests
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just in case…

Update 20/06/2014

Finishing driver and my eyes together with it :stuck_out_tongue:

Shrinking the mass of wires switches and AMC chips that I call driver in one small place

I really was afraid how will pas this. Lots of unclear thing is the process so I spend a lot of time thinking about how will do it. Once I make a general idea than I start work on it.
This is how it looks before I started this part of work:

In that state it served me well for testing and measurements. Again since it is a lot of work I will try to post the smallest number of photos that I believe can give you a right idea of the work. For those who are curious here is the link of all photos in driver section:
http://postimg.org/gallery/9idvvcto/

About measurements of Vf after I made them and studied one sentence come to my mind:
‘Huston we have a problem here’ lol
Here are the measurements:

I have an printed copy of Match tests that I usually use for deducting I in my led. I chose this way simply because measuring I from multimeter is very hard and inaccurate usually. Measuring V in other side it’s easy and usually very accurate even from cheap meters.

Problem in my readings is very high Vf compared to Vf of Match. In the start when I is low everything match pretty well but later one in high ampere levels to my eyes something is wrong. I can’t explain this right now and invite anyone with more knowledge than me on the subject, please come here and share some light. Maybe match used some PWM power supply and these affect readings? Maybe latest cree with higher bin act slightly differently? OR I am missing something and am just interpreting wrong this graph?
But let’s move on. Since I can’t say for sure what current my led is getting I am making some educated guess. I believe that from a single cell fully charged I am getting around 4.5 A, but again I can’t be 100% sure on this. Judging by Vf of Mtach I should have more but I don’t believe am getting more than this from a single cell…
Saying this lets move one with the build:
After I made some drawings in real scale (1:1) which helped me to clear ideas

I started work on this


Than I make solid the inner part



next step was ripping apart the old driver getting AMC I have solder before from there:

in the first version I use 10 AMC (380mA) in 4 groups in 1,2,3,4 configuration optimizing it now will use 15 AMC (380mA) again in 4 main groups but this time in 1,2,4,8 configuration. This will gave me 15 levels of output from 380mA to ~5.7A
For doing this I preserve 1, 2, 4 stacks and only added 5 AMC to the 3 group.
The next step was putting them in place. One of the biggest mistakes I made during this build is that in this moment I chose to experiment with the group with 4 AMC and not solder it in the pill but use epoxy just to see the differences with soldering procedure I chose for other groups




I ran on different problems later on during the work

The green wire is the temperature monitor I put there to monitor temperature during soldering process of AMC. I do not need nasty surprises like burned AMC or flickering after, during use. I have not much time for repairing later so better do it right. So soldering was a pain for deferent reasons. My eyes starting being tired so in this moment I decide I need to do something for them, after little thinking I come with this :

may sound like stupid but work good and the added light really help. I like it so much that now I am thinking on building something more seriously or just to buy one. However for now I finished the work with this and was very satisfied in the end lol

So let’s continue with building






I made some temperature measurement to see what I have done:

And the results where more than good, the most problematic single AMC during use in one full 18650(worst case scenario) after ~2 min in use rise only 0.2 grade C. the big stack with 8 AMC rise only 0.1C during use.
Next I played with different switches (I can’t stress how important is a good switch in the overall performance of the flashlight in my case) to get the one with the lowest resistance.

Opened and check different ones but too tired to go in detailed analyze now. What I chose was one that worked really well. It was not the best looking of the bunch but what differentiates it was how well it works.

update 23/06/2014

I think a lot how to make something very solid for holding all parts of the driver including DIP switch and general power switch too together with all AMC and wires. This is a key part that connect led and battery section. I have done led part and also batteries section, this was my last big hurdle making my project a reality and finalizing 3 month of hard work. Ok. I look what materials have around make an last evaluation and start the work.










And put the driver inside

it looks that with some work everything will fit inside
so I continue work for switches



it was not that easy:



it was a fight against the patience this:







and I am not going in details here how much tries I have made till I was satisfied with result in the end

When I all connected first thing I do before put batteries on and fire up I check all with multimetter. This was a wise decision; I have something very wrong somewhere causing a short circuit between plus and minus. In an unprotected 18650 or even worse three of them this could cause serious problems…
Can you imagine what mean connecting all together and now to not have idea what was wrong; I was devastated for a fraction of a sec, lucky me I find defect and what goes wrong and repair it for living, so I gathered forces and started to check. Problem was here:

During put all together one of cooper wires soldered in driver pill for cooling cut the positive wire that go to led. Well cooling is soldered in GND of AMC so was negative…
I was so happy I find it, it was little bit hard because it was not a permanent short, some time it make contact some time not depending on pressure. I take measurement that something similar not happen again in future.


Everything was smoothed there to not cut anything again


This photo shows the original driver on UF-T20 compared with my driver

I had another defect that causes some flickering AFTER some use of dip swich, lucky I find again where problem lie:

this photo explain it all:

i was not vigilant enough during projecting and this detail escape me back then, do you find where problem is??? :slight_smile:

in the end i fix this too and driver was more than ready to work:



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bump ? :stuck_out_tongue:
that was a useful bump :stuck_out_tongue:

well my flashlight was finally ready to shine but you know me having a xp g2 in copper overdriven like X3 or more around 5 A with an Fresnel lens 100mm diameter with around 0.4 f was not satisfied. The beam was good strong and with a big hotspot. Around 200 000 lux but still I wanted more, so before we go in beam shots I have one more little modification to do.

Reflectors +Aspheric

When I marry reflector and aspheric together for the perfect throw,

and the waiven start to be little bit jealous…. :stuck_out_tongue:

I took this reflector :

curious like always how it will work. Diameter 100 mm, not smooth but not orange peal type either, it have somehow strange reflecting pattern, but it work relatively well.
Better than fresnel both in lux AND in total lumens it output and I like this fact.
But it was not only this I have another idea in mind to that had to experiment.
I took the aspheric of my UF-T20 and this time I had the luck by my side.
In theory I wanted to kill the spill one wide reflector have and recycle it in the throw, and this can be easy obtained in this way :

Normally in a reflector the throw numbers are the area in yellow and in the middle there is a missing part in light that looks like black hole. In my setup there is added the lux throw from aspheric so total throw of the system is reflector throw + aspheric throw like there are two separate setups IF is done right way.
I started the work:



Even the reflector alone it was better than the Frensel in throw.
I continued with the plan>


Lucky for me I find an very elegant solution for my new setup







apart that it was very difficult to focus, (three deferent parameters in one) it was a big success for me. The max throw I was able to add to the reflector was around 1/3 of the reflector. On one fresh 28A Samsung I get around 350 000 lux from a xp d2 with dome. Without dome it should go around 700 000 and I believe with three 20R Samsung and some fine focusing I could get even more maybe. It would be very cool if I get my RBRZM lux numbers(just over 1 000 000 lux) in a smaller package AND with a lot of lumens too(around 900). So throw and lumen in one and good run time in other modes all in one scratch build make me very hapy.

Beam shots

I have limited view from my house. I have like 4 or 5 distances I make comparisons for my lights. They vary from 15 meters to around 250~300 meters
Waiting for the night to come

This is around 15m
This is control shot


Around 50 m


Around 150 meters


Around 300 meters

One in the sky
!
Control shot

sorry for my low quality of photos and posting but this is a race against time. If i find more time will post better shots and maybe some comparisons with convoy M2 because that is my only flashlight that you know well enough to get an idea.
i have to work on my flashlight to make it decent looking have some nice ideas but not sure on time. functionally its working 100 for now as it is and it looks very reliable from 2 week test i done.

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Hey Ervin. Intrigued to see where you go with this. Hope your ideas crystallize for you soon.

Clever idea on making that jig for shaping that copper wire. Will you need to strip the enamel coating off that wire for your purposes?

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Great photo sequence. Not sure if it was intended but you had me lol with your burgeoning herd of copper critters. You have my attention. :slight_smile:

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I’m loving this. I can’t wait for more.

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I'm loving your build. Just a quick question. Where do you get it, patience that is, you sounded jaded half way through and then continued onto mk2. You certainly are building something unique.

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Art.

Looking forward to the rest. :)

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Interesting

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You should already get extra jury points for this starting photo-series, whatever happens in the rest of the build :beer:

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I can’t wait to see what the heck this is gonna be.

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hm. you basically created a “standard wire bending jig”.

older people that were handy all had one… i picked one up years back, and used it once or twice.

if everyone of the copper bent pieces were uniform ENOUGH,i see what you are looking for, a really cool heat sink.

great imagination and resourcefulness… applause

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Looking forward to the updates, very interesting work.

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well believe it or not I am intrigued myself, its the first time I am doing a flashlight so its a new territory. Thanks to the Old-Lumens who made this possible, after all i don’t think I will ever try to make an flashlight from scratch other ways.
unfortunately yes I have to strip enamel coating and already started to do that if u can see in the last photos. now I have to make them straight line, all again from the beginning, of the copper parts that I worked to clean them up and again to work with the new mode by hoping they will look better. so for now i have some bulk and repetitive work to do, only time is needed.

thank you :slight_smile:

thank you too I will try to progress as fast as i can.

thank you. patience come usually whew you enjoy something or love it, and I am trying to enjoy this :slight_smile:

thank you. you are all kind and this is turning in something I have to take more seriously. hope I will be able to finish it.

thank you :slight_smile:

ah that was very reassuring, especially now that am starting to feel the weght of fear of deluding, if I fail with this build :slight_smile: cheers

:beer: but i intend to take my time with this, so even if I have a lot of free time(which i don’t have), I do not intent to rush with this.

thank you :beer:

thank you , as soon as i can…

again thank you all, as soon as i can will post photos if I progress.
I was hoping somebody will like it, but as is turning out you are putting me before responsibility. now i have to think more to not delude anybody :bigsmile:

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And therein you have discovered the nature of the scratch built beast.

Last year I made a light from a .50 BMG live round. It was a big success and I could barely believe I did it!

This year I’m having to step up the game, and am not sure I’m up to it. :slight_smile:

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Ervin, last year, I picked up some heavy copper washers from a friendly, local plumbing supply house for under a $1 ea. These were not the skinny crush-able type used for auto oil pans and the like. The washers were normal sized, like in your bolted assembly pic, and were meant for a Jacuzzi brand spa pump fitting. Just an idea that could help out?, or not.

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This is going to be cool :slight_smile:

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nickelflipper thanks

thank you i hope, for now its just a black hole for my free time :~
by the way nice work u are making too, will post later

firs post updated.

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I hope you weren't in to much trouble and dinner was ready when you got home. Its good to see you get the soldering done and the light lit up. For some reason I only seem to make them smoke.

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still alive :bigsmile:
its my living profession right now to solder, and IT, and this kind of stuff so its not just luck that i haven’t smoked something just jet. in other side of the coin I would love to have the ability you have(and I lack) to work and bring to live beautiful metallic stuff like you do …. :beer:

first post updated, driver homework, still some things to do and post and than will be complete for the driver section on my build.

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Gob smacked. Lost for words.