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

Art.

Looking forward to the rest. :)

Interesting

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

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

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

Looking forward to the updates, very interesting work.

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:

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:

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.

This is going to be cool :slight_smile:

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.

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.

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.

Gob smacked. Lost for words.

Looks very cool, good work! :slight_smile:

thank you dave_

sort of BUMP :stuck_out_tongue:
first post updated driver finally is over, hope to not have bothered anyone, next step design, head construction, metal, metal, metal ………… :stuck_out_tongue:

Hey Ervin, I’m also in the contest and I haven’t started yet, but I figure why not help out the competition in the spirit of BLF karma?

When you’re soldering 7135 chips together, try taking a TINY bit of superglue and bonding the stack together ahead of time. Saves a ton of frustration. Also some good tweezers like you can get from mountainelectronics.com

One more thing, if you very carefully bend the three pins on the chip down ahead of time on all but the bottom chip in the stack it’s way easier to get the solder to jump from pin to pin.

Good luck!

This is a really interesting thread Ervin. Just two tips you may not have dug up from the volumes of DIY posting that goes on here. One member, I think maybe Djozz but can’t remember and couldn’t find the post if I did, suggested this method and I used it successfully on a recent mod. Epoxy the chips together with hi temp epoxy(JB weld works) and weave fine wire around/between the pins.

The second tip is to use the dip switches to control the gate pins only and use a second high power switch for main power. This idea for the amc 7135 has been around for awhile but if you are new to using them you may not have seen it.

Hey Ervin, if you want to bend metal look up annealing.

onetrickpony,Rufusbduck thank you both, super advices. I guess this are the type of benefits on an very friendly and with a lot of talented and experienced members around.
thanks to both of you it looks like driver going in a revision…

design in second post, started to update.