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

Chrome and 300kbps handles it fine on a 5yo comp, except for 1 pic for whatever reason.

Definitely worth taking the time to look through em’ all though, a TON of tiny details in this light. The further I scrolled the more I kept thinking “this is ridiculous… and awesome” :stuck_out_tongue:
I can’t imagine how long it took to put this whole thing together.
Bravo Ervin.

Also:

I’m sorry Ervin, I’m afraid I can’t do that. :bigsmile:

Wow. You have the patience of a saint. That’s one amazing build right there, great pictures too.

That looks like the eye of Sauron

What an amazing effort. Such an enormous amount of work into every little part and there are so many little parts. Well done. The light is no longer at the end of the tunnel. Its on the unit three streets away. The throw looks to be real winner along with the light itself.

Wow - a ton of work in those last updates. Great determination.

…not a bad beam either!! :beer:

Yes, i agree, and maybe because it’s so many pictures, you really enter Ervin’s weird world of flashlight building.
Fascinating. Organic.
He really does NOTHING like how i would have done it ! :party:

And it seems it’s just me who has problems with the first page, so i guess it’s just another computer ageing problem…

Holy smokes. It lives! :-) I love the mad design and the great determination. Looks like something that is not meant to be invented before 2040! Out of this world! What a show :-)

SICK! And it works and seems to perform too. :party:

Congratulations on your MAD creation!

Wow, what a beam. Really good follow thru on the build. It’s tough to keep all those copper parts and solder from becoming undone, great job.

Nice work condensing the images Ervin. It did seem,to speed the load time for me. Did you use the advanced post editor to do left and right images?

I’ve never thought of using both an aspheric lens and a reflector together… Very interesting idea, and it shows that it works very well too! Nice job.

If you mean for bulk images its just an option from the host.
Just a small update. Make a funn video too in my phone, i am likening being a move director lol :stuck_out_tongue:

Well done Ervin. I like it a lot.

Thank you Bucket really appreciate.

Still on the streets away from home and work, and posting again from phone but wanted to take advantage from some free moments to say a few things.
First i feel to ask sorry for my bad language skills i try as allways to improve but lattely it seems my post quality have taken a hit and this because i have been too tired or with little time and away from my pc to edit properly. I will try to improve but dont wait miracles in this regards :stuck_out_tongue:
Sec. Since i am in the way to my home now as we speak i feel confident i will have time for some last touches here and there and also for a last mini review of my flashlight.

Third,again Thank You All for the support, for reading and the good words, we builders allways take the chance and thank OL for making this possible but i think this time to thank you all for just take the time reading and follow too, because if not for you i will not have taken this seriously and probably there would have been a minus one flashlight made from scratch. So just as to know when we finish something there in the finished product are a lot of component one part material and one parts ideas thoughts and feelings and in my build the ‘magical’ tone and fillings are from you who support it. So when you see the photos and the strong beam from this flashlight just know that the magical aura that sorround it is your bits and contribution in this build…
Ps, if the last sentences do not make any sense to you, just ignore it :stuck_out_tongue:

It looks like you have brought the support wires and stressed skin web farther forward to support the section where the solder joint is in the front circular wire. Very neat!

you have a strong eye Fritz, and indeed the whole structure is stronger now. the build is full with similar things that i don’t have time to comment in the first posts.
regarding first ring, something strange happened about a week or two ago. i let my flashlight on the working desk ok and go home and the next day that particular joint on the ring you are speaking about just was broken by itself… at first i thought how is that possible(its not that easy to brake I had make it with an shape like an open Z sort off that joint) but when i think a little about it i see it was the reflector fault. when i focused it i pushed very hard inside and that was a strong stay for reflector but resulted in much tension in the joint. way it break during the night that is still a mystery to me :stuck_out_tongue:
but now really is a strong structure the bronze sheets with some sort of transparent epoxy from the outside and from the inside angles(invisibile from the eye) with normal epoxy make it way more stronger than what it was before. in fact all soldering joints i have reinforced with transparent epoxy. also the reflector is being hold in place diferent way.
if u think about it making some sort of half sphere or similar to the reflector shape from metal with hand tols, that is not something easy. now that i am thinking about it all others are avoiding doing it. what u see is my solution how to achieve it. its not easy but i cant think of a more easy way to do it right now.

The work of a sculptor, really great light and original. I would have to say your light turned out nothing like I thought it would in the beginning, it turned into a beautiful work of art.

Yes, I had not noticed that you advanced beyond the Fresnel. I see from your diagram that you have a very efficient solution that I had not thought of, maybe more expensive, heavier, maybe larger, but more efficient.
The Fresnel loses some light due to diffraction from all those edges and some due to imperfections, and of course it can’t collect the light from all the way around like you have.
It is a bit like Fresnel’s own lighthouse designes that used lens segments near the center and total internal reflection segments near the edges. They also wrapped around, but only a little.

OK this is last update, i finally find some time.

Fritz that is just a beautiful Fresnel, is it yours?

i wanted just to show how i made the latest progress beam shots and some mini review and general thoughts in the end. just click on the photos to see them bigger

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the object you see in beam shots are around 400 m. cant find some more further object sorry. and all are unedited and taken from my lg g2 camera in normal mode.

a few words about the flash light. i like a lot playing with it its a nice toy. almost everyone who see it show interest for it. it looks and feels strong in the hand. the bad side is that is very heavy, with one battery is 718 gr. good news is that the weight is very balanced in hand not front heavy or tail heavy but it just feel balanced in hand. also almost 80 or even more of the mas is part of the pill and the radiator. and to make it even better i soldered the head with the 2 rings of cooper and wires together so the head is just an big radiator of cooper wires. all parts that count are polished. i do not make a stress test because there no need for it. i measure led directly at the joints where it is soldered in the cooper star (the hottest point one can measure during work of led) and the max that go was around 80 grade Celsius after around 5 min in max(xp g2 at around 4.5~5A) when i find time will do more exact test just for funn with xml and xpe. heat management is really good the mass of cooper just absorb the first wave of heat than the big surface(the radiators) take care of the rest.
driver work just good, no flickering, no PWM and it just stay cold. it could be better if i put a lower mode than what it is now(380mA) this can be done easy but i dont have time probability will do it later.
throw is good i like it its so strong that make me think about dedome or not and in fact i was happy as it is no need for now for dedoming, maybe later when i get bored with this i dedome, normally should go around 700,000 lux but not sure on xp g2 vf dedomed if it go up than i should see less maybe around 500 000 lux we will see about that.
beam is not thin like in flashlight with big aspherics, but the spot is unusual almost missing compared with traditional reflector lights. i dont have a sphere to measure lumen but normally should be at around 800 or 900 mark this is an guess however. theoretically i should have no loses like in aspheric setups just small loses from reflector and lens quality should be there.
battery just work good.
on the negatives i dont have much to tell really. its heavy and this can be seen as bad thing. its big and you just can not put it in your jeans pocked this can be a negative thing too. battery tube is not strong its helped by the inner structure. ah the lens that cover reflector and aspheric is very low quality and really lower the output. but its the only one i can find at around 100 mm. if i find something coated and better will change for sure.
if i had more time i was planing on doing:

  1. 1 or 2 lower modes
  2. putting one glow led inside radiator(i have left some space for this ) just for funn, it can be always on and be commanded from dip switch that have 4 free switches.
    i test some leds with some resistors in parallel. one more led near the power key in red color this could be always on to just to know where to power on in the dark the flashlight. it can be also commanded from dip switch. i have started to work on this too but no more time.
  3. work an one more aesthetic tail cap.

i started this as a play just for fun, but in the end it evolved me just a little bit more. i have used lot of parts and tools on it so cost went a bit high. the amount of work is just imaginable or maybe u can imagine it like 2.5 months full on this :stuck_out_tongue: i think i am in overdose of building things and will make an big pause from now on. the good thing is that i now do not envy not a single flashlight that is being sold in the marked right now that i can think off. before this i have my eyes in one or two, but now that i have my new toy really do not want anything else.

well that is all i can think right now. it has been an wonderful journey for me this and i really try to enjoy it. i wish to everyone best luck, hope you enjoyed too, that’s all from me :bigsmile:

So very awesome. Congratulations, that light rocks and its all Ervin! No one else could have come up with that creation.