You can see the archived poll results on the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221220093741/https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/72692
In the league of maxabeam and megaray ?
Would you be interested in a powerful multi-LED spotlight if it was somewhat large and required a tri-pod?
Only if it came with a clip. I hate lights falling to the bottom of my pocket.
Shipping costs could be fun so that needs to be taken into consideration
It’s the multi-LED bit that I’m interested in, as opposed to what size it is.
Considering some of the conversations MEM has been participating in, I’d think whatever it is would be interesting! I want to see it!
I am interested to see what you come up with in both form factors either way 
I think it may be room for both in the market, i just saw that there was so many ordereing Vinh’s crazy Tk75vn77 7x XHP70 21000 lumens 1000$ light, he was forced to stop sales, so if the performance are unusually high there will always be guys willing to pay for it.
But i hope your aren’t aiming for such crazy high prices, but then why would you pose the question on a “budget forum” 
If you were building it MEM I'd be interested in anything you had to show. 
If it rivals short arc then yes I'm interested lol!
About those monsters; I will say it like this. I could probably never duplicate the great aesthetics and manufacturing technology found on those lights—those masterpieces. They are very well engineered for what they do. I think they both look great as far apart as they may be from one another in looks.
Those lights will always hold their place where they belong, as far as short-arc lights go. Arc-bulb lights and their technology is nothing to ignore even in 2015. Still they are top on the flashlight food chain as far as throw.
An LED emits most intense light within 20-30° of beam center, though. Being a forward-directional emission pattern then, it takes a very long reflector length until the most intense central light rays even get close enough to the sides of the reflector to be used for any high intensity gain (much unlike an arc bulb). This is why, you won’t see 1000kcd reflector flashlights anytime soon; the part of the beam a reflective aperture (collar) reflects back at the die for a lens to re-capture (the “wasted” light), is the part of the beam a regular reflector uses to create the throw. This is why I disagree with reflectors in LED flashlights, for the most part. It’s simply backwards, to me. If light is most intense at the center of natural emission pattern, a lens front-center to intake that concentrated light is how to harvest intensity and throw.
With the new 3D printer I have, I have some new-found ability to make some interesting combinations of parts work out.
Using compact, portable designs, we are limited in what an LED light can do. Costs go up much more quickly to fit the custom parts together as does labor to precisely set everything into place. Remove the highly-portable limitation though, and an LED can be manipulated under quite different arrangements.
Take the MegaRay, at 3.25Mcd. I can reach near 2Mcd from a 77mm lens and one LED. The MegaRay is short-arc, high wattage, and yet 2/3 throw ability is possible from a similar lens size as it uses with one LED. Just remember, total lumens=far less.
I’ve had an idea for a while now I can finally make work, I feel—which isn’t too ugly in the end. I have a stockpile of custom asphere lenses I purchased a while back that I have kept packed away in microfiber, waiting to be unleashed. Yes, I can take one of my single corrected optical arrays, and make an impressive hand-held (like the MEM J20). But, if I am unrestricted in lens amount, I can make a triangle of lenses side-by-side. Heck, I could make a bulkhead with 3-5 of my lenses as the “light-emitting wall”. A plate would hold the focusing elements, so that the plate could be focused forward or back ahead of the LEDs (flood to throw). A secondary plate would now hold the LEDs. Keep in mind, one single 150mm to 200mm diameter aspheric lens has the lens area to greatly out-throw 3 or 4 x75mm lenses any day of the week based on total lens area. BUT! When one single lens is used, one single emitter must also be used behind it. That means no matter how large the lens becomes, the system will be lumen-restricted (bottlenecked) based on the one emitter choice used.
If a plate of multiple lenses is used, one lens could project typical white (think XP-G2/XM-L2 as emitter), one could project the many lumens of a larger emitter (MT-G2), the final lens could project a copy of either/or of chosen emitter, or a new color such as IR to enhance the possible application. Or any combination of any LEDs, really. 3 XM-L2s would be making 5Mcd+ with reflective apertures (very conservatively speaking!). This is the only way one can mix and match emitter types behind an aspheric lens, and create a new beam profile; multiple, parallel aspherics. You want massive flood and throw? 2x MT-G2 + 2x XM-L2 on a 4-lens output bulkhead. You’ll have 4° light and a 1.6° beam punching down the center of that massive beam, with 9,000+ total lumens leaving the light.
This would be large and likely a bit funky looking, but the design could prove highly useful.
First, I would not simply use multiple lens points and call it a day. A rear plate with a “standardized heat-sink pattern” would be used. If I am choosing a standardized heat sink pattern, I want the ability to have a well-supported upgrade path to my heat sinks. An Intel CPU heat sink pattern would open up a world of possibility here. TEC cooling, heatpipe, high-output fan, and liquid would become finished options anyone could install out of a new box. Since the heat sink mounting is standardized, anything that will cool an Intel CPU could be fitted to the light system at your descretion. If you were the type of extremist that wanted 10°C LEDs through their whole run, outfit the heat sink mount plate with liquid blocks and run cold water through it. To some that sounds like overkill, but the point would be professionally designed and marketed heat sink products that go on and on.
External power source is another great option. When running this much light, a large remote-cell near the system would lend the power needed for plenty of running time. An RC pack charger could then re-charge the system in a very short amount of time.
Choosing a certain host, I am restricted by that host in every scenario. But in an open-platform design, new options for beam profile and intensity become much more plug-n-play friendly for the user. The system cost can be diverted in many ways by what the end-user chooses as options. The build becomes easier, and cheaper, and configurations could be “hot-swappable” in the field. Most limitations we experience are aesthetic only, remember. We change so much of our ideas to get a design into a new light type, that sometimes it is forgotten how to change the light into a new design type.
—Has anyone seen the notorious “Nightsword project” on CPF? Oh brother. For some it became an inside joke long ago. (Reminiscent of the mall-ninja story. ) I hope he doesn’t read here of this comment, heh, but take a look at what we get to follow from this never ending idea creator. This example involves a guy who has been living in a flashlight fantasy dream with half the CPF forum for over 4 years straight, drooling over a GPS/Bluetooth/radar-jamming/heat-seeking/OLED interface/biometric retina-scanning, “production light” he is supposedly bringing to everyone if we just keep waiting. He evn registered the domain to help convince, that’s always been under construction. All I have personally seen in 20 something pages, is 3D renderings of what the people tell him they would like to see in the ultimate 75 Mcd light as it has now evolved to. Check these photos back on pg11 of the thread for some of these renderings I speak of: The Nightsword project | Candle Power Flashlight Forum
If you look at way too many tennis rackets, this might happen to your imagination:
What I am rambling about above is not that I am angry at him, or that I have anything against him personally. It’s that people hung-up on pleasing everyone else’s ideal light design, will manifest their wishes so deeply in the reader’s approval, that their own design will never actually appear anywhere but 3D land. I don’t hope to gain any approval of aesthetics with my idea for a new light, but I think I can reasonably put the multi-million candela LED power many wish for in their hands, if they would be open to the realistic side that sometimes, bigger is needed to get there. But, if MEM is stamped on it, you can bet your butt it’s going to make some neighbors very upset who live down your road.
Joking aside, I would like to make a light unrestricted by host size, using my implementation of lenses and batteries. Without a tri-pod, and there isn’t a logical way to enjoy this light at the physical size levels I depict here. If everyone was against tri-pod use, it would not look too promising to design it with much time and effort. It appears I am a little surprised myself, as there are more willing to deal with tri-pods than I had imagined. Living in the country, I really enjoy tripods, as my use is often very slow horizon scanning, or static light placement at distance for experimental projectile testing during the after-hours.
Hehe lol :D, but joking aside I want that, i had a run in with “slightly” upset neighbour from only a ~400 kcd light, i want to see what he has to say about 2 mcd :bigsmile: so bring it on MEM.
And what is the MEM J20? Are you already selling lights?
MEM, I just had this thought. The specification of “tri-pod only” is very subjective. What you think of as tri-pod only, someone else might put a handle on and say “It’s not so bad to carry…” So, what I’m saying is that if you are just generally talking about a very large light, that might be a few pounds, well, we’ve got that here, without a tri-pod requirement. For instance, look at Old-Lumens’ monster build a while back. Some people would say that light is too big and heavy to hold in the hand. While others take up the challenge of saying “Eh, I can carry it.” Bottom line is that depending on just how big of a light you’re actually talking about making, some of the people who voted “must be portable” might still like it if you include a handle by which it could be carried, even if it doesn’t make sense to you. If it really is too big to be carried at all by a single human, it better be making multiple tens of thousands of lumens and tens of millions candela. Because O-L already made a “portable/handheld” light that makes ~20,000lm and more than one person has made Mcd handheld flashlights.
+1
I agree David
I can see myself lugging around a crazy powerful light at up to 3-5kg if it isn’t too wide & blinding from glare of the lenses. It depends of course how balanced the weight is, if its long & front heavy then less weight, but if its shorter & most of the weight is close to the hand/hands it can get much heavier comfortably.
But then i like to work out & have done so for over a decade, so what i consider a comfortable weight to carry by hand now, certainly isn’t what i would consider carry for long before i started.
But if the light is very big & heavy, the shipping cost could get very expensive unfortunately.
EDIT
Hmm, i just realized that if it is very big with lots of lenses & leds, i most likely can afford it anyway, but i will still enjoy reading about your technical achievement ;).
Well maybe i am wrong here, i hope that i am
And MEM, what is “experimental projectile testing” sounds interesting are we talking pyrotechnics, or what are you sending so far away you need a tripod sized light to spot it in the night again :~
any picture of this concept light yet?depend on its look :bigsmile:
I definitely understand where you are coming from; different people, different preferences. So far this light I am proposing here, would just seem very large and would be balanced much differently than a typical handheld based on the arrangement of a dual-plate, or optics-plane + LED-plane (dual-level layout which may be used in an “open” environment). Using a combination most likely of J20 heads mounted down to a flat surface and heatsinks mounted rearward. Support rods would extend to the back heatsink surface plane where the LEDs would be mounted. It could be used as an open design, weather-permitting. If I were to close the entire light it would take a bit of extra body work to design and would still not be considered water proof but would be dust-shielded a bit better.
The main idea was a triangle of 3 ~90mm lenses with a combination of LEDs between the 3 heads (1 LED emitter per lens assembly).
The other J20 I speak of is a different handheld light altogether, but would share optical components with this large multi design if it were to be implemented as a triple that way. The regular J20 project I took on is a single handheld with a very powerful (10A+ forward amperage) buck driver designed for it, and a 3D printed ring I designed which holds the asphere snug in place. The optics are multiple coated aspheric telescope/camera grade optics which have multiple elements to achieve the effect of one larger thickness aspheric lens. this arrangement an achomatic doublet is used to first converge the aperture light in a more precise manner for some aberration correction. A deep asphere and especially a non-quality aspheric lens will have increased chromatic abberation which makes some of the light scatter and become unuseable. It also effects downrange tint appearance
Here are photos of what would most likely be a major component system of the head design—the J20+optics. With multiple beam stacking, after about 20 meters as long as the heads are aligned well, the beams will align as one apparent intense main beam. This effect can also be achieved with one larger lens alone (150-200mm OD), and one single LED, but the total lumens will be far less. Beam angle will be much lower in the single-lens arrangement due to lens surface area/LED die area. Lux won’t necessarily be higher though for certain, due to the beam stacking—a lot of extra throw is gained because of many added lumens within the beam, further increasing lux. So the outcome would greatly depend on the LEDs used in the trio. 3 XM-L2s might be quite potent.
(Next to 1504)
