Hey guys,
I’ve been toying around with an idea I’ve had for a high powered light bar for offroading. I have a some experience with CAD and machining, so I decided to sketch up an idea in Fusion 360. It’s designed to run 2 Samsung LC080D COB emitters, for a total of ~26k LED lumens. I originally was going to go with some Cree CXB series emitters, but the Samsung ones have similar lumen output with a smaller LES of only 22mm, which helps with throw. Speaking of which, I ran some rough throw calculations, with a 5” reflecting surface, you’re looking at a respectable 500kcd within 30 degree beam. WAAAAAYYYY better than regular light bars with rows of tiny reflectors.
The water cooling block and reflectors would be machined out of a single piece of aluminum, which should make it super reliable and sturdy, not to mention great thermal conductivity. For cooling, a water pump and large CPU radiator should do the trick, possibly able to handle full output power indefinitely. I’m envisioning giving the whole thing a silver electroplate finish, which will give the reflectors a pretty sweet reflecting surface. The rough dimensions of the light bar is about 18” x 6” x 5”. Here’s some screenshots so you can get a rough idea of what I’m visualizing:
One of the caveats is getting the manufacturing costs down, which go down pretty significantly when you get more than 2-3. For qty 1, the total project cost would probably be around $2-3k, which is kinda out of my budget range. But as soon as you get up to 10 or more, the cost per unit drops considerably, down to $1k-ish per.
I don’t really have any experience with group buys or anything like that, but I figured what the heck, it can’t hurt to put the idea out there. Anyway, let me know if you would be even remotely interested in something like this.
Throwton