5D Mag - SST-90 - 95mm Aspheric - 9+amp build - Finished on 03/17/15 and beam shots are in Post #1

The light is done and it fought me from day one, till the very end. I will consider it a triumph and fail, in the same breath. It did finally light up. It did hit a building at 2.1 miles, but it did not do it as I expected. The output is much less than expected, but it worked, so in a way, it's a pass/fail kind of thing. Could be either way, depending on the individual feelings.

The photos above show the finished light, with some smaller lights next to it. The lens was moved till it would give a square dir focus at roughly 1,000 yards. Best I could do and I am sticking to that story.

It was VERY hard to align the light on a building 2 miles away and try to capture it, without being able to actually tell where you are hitting the building. The first photo could easily be mistaken as just glare, or an alien ship, or swamp gas... It's on the right side of the big building and it's right on top of a lighted window. A blueish cast over it, see it? Well, maybe not...

But the next photo does prove to me that I hit the building with the light more than once.

Now, that might not be very impressive or very bright, but I do believe I did hit the 2 mile mark. 2.1 miles to be more exact. I did not get to my 3 mile goal, but then again, I don't have anything three miles away to aim for. I think an XM-L2 or XP-G2 pushed to higher amps, (like 8 or 10), would hit with a much brighter and smaller beam. I also think that would be even more useless than this light is.

I am determined for this to be the last long distance light I ever do.

Thanks for watching...

subscribed…

Very nice build so far, cant wait to see the other build as well

Subscribing to see what Texans use to heat their garage.

Interesting, especially as i might have a 6 d cell mag kicking about somewhere.

They got banned years ago, now you can only legally carry 4 cell mags over here iirc.

i might have to pool the 2bbl aspheric lens i have and get it done after seeing this :)

Hehehehehe!!! That is a seriously big lens you got there, I can’t wait to see some progress!!! Looking forward sir, looking forward…

Here is the popcorn, this is gonna be good! :heart_eyes:

I and my wife have watched your video just like a movie :heart_eyes: and there was a big smile on my face , i have almost 130mm Aspheric lens that i weren’t know what i could do with it, well now i know :smiley: , then i got shocked when i saw this Big black head with the 4 reflectors , what is that ? and from where you got it ?

subscribed…

Interesting. :slight_smile:
…but the LED needs to be 140mm away from the lens? Looks like the PVC piping might block some of the light if the LED is moved that far away?

9 amps, 3 miles, 4D Maglite, 140mm. You have my attention.

subscribed! this is going to be one epic build

Definitely interested in seeing this one come together! Looks epic! 8)
I had similar thoughts as Blinky1 about the narrow neck of the adapter possibly blocking some of the emission angle of the LED at such a long focal length?

Oh and you’re sure you don’t want to splurge on an SBT-70 for this build? Seems like the ideal LED for such a monster lens, nice round projected die! :bigsmile:

No heat. No AC either, so it’s either cold or hot.

That black head is a 5 mega and there’s a LED ZEP heat sink in it. It was 4xP7 but it will be 4 of the XHP70, maybe someday, when the mcpcbs and some 5000k or 5700k leds come out. It’s a build for a customer, just like this one is.

190mm focal length. I don’t know how it will come out. That’s part of the fun. I am going to try to incorporate a Wavien collar and see how that works. There may very well be an issue with the 2" diameter going to 4", but time will tell. What I might end up doing is to extend the 4" pipe, so that the 2" end just sits over the Maglite head, so the led would basically be into the 4" diameter to begin with. I don’t know how it’s going to go yet.

It was a thought, but I just want to see how much I can do with an SST-90. I just like those leds for some reason.

Better test run a scrap PVC pipe in the oven before you melt or disform (don’t think that’s a word) all your hard work

I know what you mean, I’m still tempted to build something around an sst-90 myself. It’s probably that juicy looking massive die! :slight_smile: