Verrrry cool I am keeping a keen eye on this one.
Strive on OL
Basically, it's done. I have the handle to do, but everything is buttoned up and working. Beam shots tonight. 07/07/15
I don't think mass is the whole answer really. I just like massive over normal. What it needs for sure is a bunch of fins on the heat sink, so the fan can do it's job and blow across a big surface area, created from the fins. I have never tried one of the holders. I went with just AA because I am cooling it with a fan, so it should not get to the temp where the AA would fail. Time will tell about that, but that fan really puts out some air and some noise. You can hear it across the garage, when it kicks in.
Woo Hoo, 3 days after the 4th and another light show.
While you guys are building all these lights, I’m stuck on vacation.
I never have any fun. 
Vacation? You poor baby. I don’t know how you hold up.
This thread has grown. I need to read it because the light looks awesome. Love the reflector/emitter look. Just looks like pure business. Interested to see how you finish (anno, paint, etc) it, if you intend to.
I can relate to stuck the vacation part. I still have 3 weeks away from home in a really weird country. No one understood a thing today and that included my name. I'll have to pick an English speaking country next time.
Nearly there OL as only you can.
Beam Shots are up! In Post #1.
Enjoy!
Speechless. The whole light has your unique touch on every aspect of it. The beamshots? All I can say is that there is one very lucky duck out there, lucky he wasn't swimming in your duck pond. 
O-L’s Wall of Light Show coming to you live from Texas.
That’s a real Texas Light.
Nice Job !
More… we needs more… the duck didn’t vaporize… Not. Enough. Power. 0:)
Looks like you had trouble with the recoil....
Very nice result!!!
:beer: :beer:
I love the way it looks:
And I want to know the lumencount!!
With these builds you really need a lightbox!!!
(For the time being don't bother with a sphere and titanium oxide, just paint a really big cardboard box, refrigerator size would be great, white on the inside with latex, three thick layers, make an entrance hole for the lights on one of the sides, and mount the luxmeter sensor next to the entrance hole with a little obstruction -piece of white cardboard- between the two to prevent direct light going from lightsource to the meter. Calibrate with a known light. If your detector is out of range for this light, take a bigger box, or put a grey filter before the luxmeter detector.)
Wall of light, sure, but how much does it throw? That Lum 5-90 reflector oughta be able to reach out pretty far. Or, did cutting the bottom off reduce its throwing power? Inquiring minds want to know!
I didn’t really have to cut off anything, just remove the very base that had the cut out for a 20mm mcpcb, so it’s not really any shorter than it was. The reason for such a huge wall of light, (I believe), is the diameter of the led. When you look at the size of an XM-L, or even an MT-G2, (as shown in one of the photos), the led surface is about 50 times larger than an XM-L, so that means it will make a spot that is that many times bigger than an XM-L. Even with a reflector, the spot ends up being huge and it won’t throw much beyond 100-150 yards, because the light has dispersed into an area of about 150 yards wide or more, at 150 yards distance, so even though there’s well over 10000 lumens, it is sent in all directions. No real way to stop that unless possibly with an aspheric lens, but I would hazard a guess that the aspheric would have to probably be over 200mm in diameter and very short focus, to make anything that was considered a reasonable spot. It is what it is. What we need is a led that produces 10000 lumens in the die size of an XP-G and then we would have a thrower. I know, lumens isn’t lux, but 10000 lumens in that small of a die, would mean the intensity would be great enough to make huge lux numbers.
I prefer not to discuss lumens count after the disaster. I have reasoned that the best lumens are the ones you don’t know the answer to, so I have adopted the Chinese lumens count equation. The light produces 100000 Chinese lumens on high.
I don't plan on ever making another lumens box, ball, bag or tube. I will just stay in the stone age.
Wow, good job O-L 
Well, looking at the PCT, and extrapolating out (since it stops at 3.6A) you should be getting closer to 20,000 lumens from that monster! If you apply a little bit of math and a whole lot of assumption, the MT-G2 seems to have a lower surface brightness (lux) than the CXA 3590. The LUM 5-90 was made for a large die LED, namely the Luminus SBT-90. Although this is still a lot larger, it is a different comparison. The Illumination Machines page for the LUM 5-90 claims it gives 46 cd/lm. So the math: 20,000 X 46 = 920,000 means you should be getting quite a bit of throw, actually. Even with losses here, there, and everywhere, if you only get half that number, it would still be huge! How much throw should 450kcd give you? I know my loose numbers and large assumptions can’t stand up against your actual experience with the light. I’m not trying to argue against what you’ve seen with your own eyes. I’m just trying to understand how this stuff works.
Me too.
From what I've seen, in order to really make a tighter spot with a led this big, would take something in the range of a 200mm OD and 150mm deep reflector. Something about the reflector having to be big enough to handle the output of the led. If you throw an SST-90 in a smaller C8 reflector, the spot is not a tight as it is in something like the 5-90 reflector. I don't know why. I just know it seems that way. Based on that, I figure a really big reflector might do justice to the 3590 led. It seems to just overpower the 5-90 and just spreads out like there wasn't a reflector there at all.
Gotcha. Thanks! :bigsmile: