Yes, a collimator could be useful for making better use of the light coming from the led, and in this design there is enough space and mounting opportunity for one.
But the original purpose of this lamp was pure throw, and every added optic will reduce that number to some extend.
If more light is needed: I placed the light engine on a slider, so that with the led moved closer to the lens, a flood beam is created, in the closest position I expect light extraction to be fairly good.
Wow! Somehow I completely missed seeing this thread when it first appeared. Great stuff, makes me want to get my hands on an aspheric lens and see what develops.
“Relax Honey! We don’t need to call the police! Its just that crazy flashlight guy on the other side, testing out his latest ISS signaling device creation. Just like the other time, we will hear all about it in a few days on the NASA channel.”
This is how the star is made.
Because I built in some tolerance, the die is focused at infinity when the slider is still 12mm short of the backside.
So when the slider is fully retracted, the focal plane of the lens is 12mm in front of the led, and the die projection is out of focus, creating a fuzzy larger spot instead of the smaller sharp square of the focused die.
So I positioned a cutout of a star (made from the lid of a coffee tin) 12mm in front of the led, which is sharply imaged at infinity by the lens, and because the led is only little out of focus, the throw is still not completely ruined (although I think it went down from 4Mcd to just 1Mcd).
Of course for maximum performance of the lamp, the cutout must be rotated out of the way.
If I find the patience I may have a go at a batman cutout, but it must be tiny, and the metal is tough.
That’s really clever. i like how you added some styling to round off the sharp corners and edges. What about the notches on the side pieces—do they hold something or just a design feature?
i would guess that the fan has an internal circuit board for pwm of the motor current and LV dropout.
Somebody with 3d printing could make plastic masks to shape the beam. But maybe they would melt…!?
That remark inspires me. I once tried to find the techniques involved in making those sixties psychedelic liquid slides. I did not quite find out the fine details but I did find a person (in Zaandam I believe) who was the expert at the time, and he was not dead yet. I may have to contact him after all :cowboy_hat_face:
you can harvest big lenses from old projection TVs at the thrift store and cut them down to size, and people will nearly pay you to come haul them out of their house.
The liquid light film slides can be made mixing insoluble liquids such as water and oil with color tints of either paint type between two panes of glass. Another example is to use air to blow a drop of water across some fresh oil-based paint and enjoy the patterns that develop. Fun stuff to do on drugs…