First of all, a HUGE thanks to everyone who helped and encouraged me to finish this build, specially Parametrek, and it’s infinite patience for my inane OpenScad questions.
How did I even get into making this flashlight. A GodAwful Mess, or AGAM for short.
I’m mostly active over at the flashlight subreddit, although I have a few posts here on BLF too. I got a 3D printer some time before the contest started, and have done some very simple flashligth related stuff with it, such as my BLF GT Extender or my Aspheric BLF GT (As of yet not perfectly focused), or a 18650*2 battery holder for a viltrox panel.
Once I knew about the contest, I decided I had to go ahead and jump into trying to make my own flashlight on the printer. I borrowed some ideas from the folks over at Silent Thunder Ordinance and their Eye of Sekhmeth and decided to try and improve on some aspects of the design (While completely butchering others, as it so happens).
This was the first mockup of the design. It has mostly stayed the same on the basics, although some things have had to change due to design constraints, like changing the battery from 18650 to 16650 to save on space.
The basic idea was to combine high CRI flood and long distance throwing into the same flashlight, while keeping replaceable batteries and using a single driver. A dragon driver was the only logical option for this. I would have preferred a more powerful secondary channel, but nothing else exists nowadays (afaik) that can do that.
The light itself was then designed on OpenScad. The very first model of the design was only meant to check if the actual hardware would fit into the dimentions I wanted. I made some mockups of the components on openscad, and then printed it out to check if everything would fit.
The 18650 battery wouldn’t really fit, and I did not want to make the light any thicker. The change to 16650 happened here, and everything else fit fairly well.
A detail of the cap. For the sake of simplicity, I decided not to use a threaded cap, and go instead for a bayonet lock.
After checking fitment of the parts, I started adding all the needed structural elements to the design, such as space for nuts, to close the backplate, reinforcements to add rigidity, etc.
In it’s current state, the ligth doesn’t close properly. The space left for the heatsink is not enough, but a new backplate is currently on the printer to try and fix the issue.
However, the light itself already works. The heatsink is not making good contact, so I’m hesitant to run it for long periods just yet, (And I have to take some pictures of the wiring inside).
The final body of the light will be black, to match the heatsink. I expect that will also cut down on the backscatter inside the light.
And here we have a beamshot of the osram flat black beam. Again, the parts are a bit loose still, and the osram is clearly not correctly focused.
Edit 2018/11/27
Some updates:
This is the internal wiring. You can also see the nuts used to keep the backplate closed and the battery.
The backplate, showing the heatsink, too. The current screws are not the right size, but I should have some new screws in time for the deadline
Secondary emitter, 219b sw45k
And primary emitter, osram flat black.
The perfect compromise for those of us who are both throw addicts and CRI babies
Edit 2018/11/29
Last few updates before the contest closes for good:
The battery can be changed without having to open the backplate, using the bayonet cap.
The OpenScad files for anyone who wants to print the shell for this flashlight or make their own version of it can be found here. In it’s current state, I can’t recommend printing this unless you really want to tinker around. I probably will continue to improve the design in the future, but for now, this is all the time I have
Some much needed improvements would include better support for the heatsink, better tolerances in general, a change in the material used to print the host, and, as a long term goal, waterproofing.
That said, in it’s current state, the light works just fine. The heatsink is more than capable of handling the heat produced, the battery is easy to change, the high cri 219b sw45k looks incredible and the osram emitter, while handicapped by the high resistance wiring and (mostly) the shoddy focusing, throws enough for trail-finding.