Have you ever seen passive heatsink with 2mm between fins? All such fins dont work at all (X6 and etc.).
Ok. It was really just an example to clarify the terms in my calculation.
I don’t remember if i signed up for one, but check to see and put me down for one.
When this light is done, can we also design a nice belt pouch for it?
I bought a military flash bang pouch to keep the Supfire M6 from Richard and that thing BARELY fits in there. I had to loosen the strap on the buckle all the way to where it only goes through one opening like this:
Eye keeping on you I am
Cheers David
DBSAR I am sure you are on the list already.
Yeah a major overhaul on the fins that adds costs and starts the process of getting the outside to look as we want again does not seem a good idea.
I hope people wanting a pouch and have a srk know of a fitting one !)
[quote=MRsDNF]
I have just finished building a quad SRK up to test Tom E’s driver and find out what sort of spread the XPL emitters would give in this light.
I’ll start with the driver. Wow. What doesn’t this driver do. I’m probably the last person to ask to test a driver like this as I get lost in my driveway let alone try to get my head around the workings of this driver. I’ve been playing with it outside in the shed, the driver hooked up to an led and my power supply and got so lost.
I eventually had everything together to assemble the SRK when I dropped the lens and yes it shattered, me as well.
The light is now operational after waiting nearly three weeks for a lens. I started with this light. The XPL leds sit on 16mm Noctigons which themselves sit on a 5mm plate. The depth of the head was machined to suit the above stack. 20AWG wires channel the current to the leds from the Narsil driver which has the latest firmware. The stock springs in the tailcap were given a bypass with 18AWG wire.
Back to the programming. I was still lost and had all sorts of modes working but had no idea how I got there. Yes I did have the instructions in front of me.
I took the instructions inside along with the light to a warmer part of the world than outside and sat down in front of the TV in my comfy chair (no pun intended ) and the instructions clearly laid out in front of me.
No luck. There was just to much going on with flashes and my poor brain not deciphering the flashes they were seeing.
Looking up I could see the light flashes reflecting on the tv screen (the tv was off). H’mm, starting again I watched the reflection of the flashes on the tv and it all of a sudden made sense. For some reason my fuzzy brain could decipher what the eyes were seeing on the tv screen, yes today the tv was a real idiot box.
The difference being was that I could clearly see the light and count accurately the flashes to work out where I was, working with the instructions.
awesome light steeve
and the comfy chair heh
I wonder if there related, this comfychair that is? I hope he’s ok as he hasn’t been around for awhile.
All very good arguments, but frankly, without making huge changes to the overall design of the light, it’s not going to make much difference.
Including this: Unless you are in a cold climate, you won’t be able to leave this light on max for 20minutes without over heating. It’s simply too much power in too small of a package.
That’s what makes it fun!
^ I agree with this. The light is just too powerful for its size to be able to run constantly on high. In my opinion, proper thermal regulation in the driver is the only way to prevent overheating in a small, high power light that is available to the masses.
When this light is done, can we also design a nice belt pouch for it?
I think this is a good idea. It would have to be a separate accessory for cost reasons, but I think Thorfire could make a good one and sell quite a few
I've got some nice mil pouches that fit SRK's well. Posted bout them wayy back. The Molle 2 clip pouch works well, even one for grenades fit -- hhmm...
Add one more for me, please
I am not thinking in terms of surface area but in terms of air flow. Air is a terrible heat conductor unless it flows. Alternatively, we could eliminate the fins, but I think they look silly with an obviously wrong shape.
Yes air that cannot move insulates
Hence glass/stone wool for insulating houses.
Yet the shape of any fin means air will start moving and thus even square fins are to be preferred over no fins.
One highly special light with an unique finning structure is very nice to see. Yet most flashlights have the square finning and if other more expensive to make finning would make a real difference I kind of think brands like Olight or Nitecore would use them since they not only have the R&D to test it, a few extra bucks would be no problem for their customers.
I’d be ok with a longer light for added heat absorption/dissipation.
OP updated with
Here goes new info on the version 5 of the driver we aim for.
Now isn’t this a thing of beauty?
After a lot of busy PMs Pilotdog68 has created V5 of the driverboard.
Special thanks to DEL for the help and scoping!
Reason for changing:
Version 5.1 board:
Oshpark link:
https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/uK4XziVN
I am not thinking in terms of surface area but in terms of air flow. Air is a terrible heat conductor unless it flows. Alternatively, we could eliminate the fins, but I think they look silly with an obviously wrong shape.
Yes air that cannot move insulates
Hence glass/stone wool for insulating houses.
Yet the shape of any fin means air will start moving and thus even square fins are to be preferred over no fins.
One highly special light with an unique finning structure is very nice to see. Yet most flashlights have the square finning and if other more expensive to make finning would make a real difference I kind of think brands like Olight or Nitecore would use them since they not only have the R&D to test it, a few extra bucks would be no problem for their customers.
- Do you imagine minimum distance between fins and minimum fin area/distance proportion to start process you are talking about?
- Do you really think ribs can help to desperse more heat with same heatsink area?
- Do you think that thousands of industrial lights manufactures, electronic devices manufactures and others who use rough formula 1W heat=20sq.cm to estimate heatsink/case dimentions are complete noobs?
Such fins:
can desperse 10W for long time:
Is anybody still sure that talking about adding extra 20-30sq.cm. from ribs to 50+W flashlight is a good idea?
OK the manual clearly states:
Never leave the flashlight ON unattended.
The Q8 is not a toy, do not let children play with it.
Hold it when in use to monitor the temperatures and turn the light off or switch to a lower mode when it starts to become really warm.
Turn the Q8 off and let it cool if it gets hot.
Then, for the most part we rely on liquid cooling.
As soon as the temperature of the housing rises above the hand temperature blood will take away heat.
OK we get this is not enough to keep it cool on turbo.
But is there any 4000+ lumens tube flashlight that can be run on highest mode without getting warm/hot?
The new Olight R50 seeker reaches 50C in just under two minutes and feels too hot to handle, the S70 and L6 need about 6 minutes to reach that temperature now (it is summer hereand warm)
We simply can’t make an extremely long and heavy tube of fins so it can run unattended on turbo till the cells are drained.
And well, if no other portable flashlight manufacturer does it on normal high powered production lights geared at the normal consumer, I don see why we would in a special light geared at modders and people who know about flashlights.
The L6 can run with no heat issues on high at approx. 1300 lumens. If you can beat that output with no heat issues then you are doing well!
Check this post of Tom
Setting it lower at 1300lumens means even less heat and power consumption.
Ok - I did a 1 hour test at a 35% setting, as I documented in the manual. I left the light tailstanding the whole time of the test at room temperature of about 74F. For 35, it uses the 7135 at max, and 27.5 PWM of the FET. I’m a few hundred miles from home, so don’t have my light meters/box or an IR temp gun, but I’d say roughly between 30 mins and 60 mins, there wasn’t any bump in the temperature of the head judging from feel in the hand. The head of the light was the hottest part, and it was on the high side of warm, but I feel it was perfectly safe. I’d say a child would feel uncomfortable holding it at that temperature, and maybe many adults that are not used to this as well. I could hold my hand on it and get used to the temperature. There was warmth felt on the battery tube as well, but I pulled the batteries quickly and they only felt slightly warmer than room temperature.
A mildly hot, or very warm temp will scare many, but I know these components can take a lot of heat, specially with copper DTP’s.
I’d say roughly the light was giving off 1,600 - 1,800 lumens, based on calculations. When I get back home, I do have to adjust all the rated output percentages I specify in the mode sets. I’m pretty sure the 35% is over-rated, since it’s based on 10% being the full 7135, where in reality it’s probably ~4% for a 4X SRK. The 35% might be more like 31%. The original percentages were based more for a single LED light.
Also, according to the blinked out voltage level, the batteries went from 4.1v down to 3.9v, which doesn’t seem bad for 1 full hour at 30-35%. The batteries are Samsung 30Q button tops.