And we have to have in mind that the LED this light will use have a beam angle of 115 degrees…
http://www.cree.com/LED-Components-and-Modules/Products/XLamp/Discrete-Directional/XLamp-XHP35-HI
Morten
Efficient in the sense that you have size (and weight) and performance meeting eachother on a ‘sweet spot’.
You’ll (probably) find it won’t add too much throw without adding a lot of hight / length / depth.
Also the base (focal plane) will decrease in diameter a little, which is also not what we want.
I got that part down on this graph, you can see there are two lines at y=–1 that can go from –90 to +90, this indicates the degrees of light captured.
Depending on the width and height, different amount of degrees are captured. (value p is degrees from horizontal)
All you need to do is overlay this graph on top and you can see how much is being collected:
Although this is just for some random LED, you need to get the correct graph for the XHP35 from the cree data sheet.
Also I need to work on integrating this function over a circle, because the –90 to +90 is just a slice that needs to be rotated around the LED.
So just keep in mind that the graph is only two dimensional and won’t give you the real numbers, just a rough idea.
This is the graph for XHP35 HI
Dang it miller… you’re killin me! Got me for 3 Q8s already. Now i gotta go in for 2 of these also. Keep it up and my wife will divorce me for sure!
P.S. that means put me down for 2 please…
Thanks!
will do!
By the time this light is completed and shipped you will probably have a lot more money than you do now xD
Guys, so is it gonna be 120 wide and 93mm deep now?
Sounds good to me.
A manufacturer hasn’t been found yet…
I thought there had been:
Shenzen Bo Rui Seiko ltd.
They can apparently make any reflector you want, and hopefully they can also be the answer to the recoil question. 
I see 4wheeler in post #5 actually have a manufacturer ready…if I understand it right?
Maybe the miller knows more about that, since he’s our main man due to communications…
And I’m not really sure about that 120-93 either now……
As mentioned in post #5:
Seem to be a company that knows “a thing or two” about reflectors…
If you scale up 2x one of the best proportion parabolic reflector from Courui D01 you will get 130 x 94 mm!
So that 120 x 93 might be very close …
We will not know what the production reflector will be besides an approx 120mm+ ID until we find a manufacture.
This is simply for a test reflector that someone offered to get a quote for us so we can have some hard data going into the manufacture negations.
Nothing has changed from the OP when it comes to the reflector, ~120mm ID. That is the only real constraint, the rest just depends on cost and what the manufacture has access to.
I know it is not probably going to happen, but why don’t we create a real monster with a reflector bigger than just 12x9 cm ? Why to limit ourselves to a flashlight that will be moderately better than a TN 42, why not build a thrower on steroids that will make the TN 42 look like a candle ??? Something that will not just be better TN 42, but will run circles around it and dwarf it in output and throw? I know I got carried away, but if we have the opportunity to make a budget thrower, why not grab this chance and make it as big as possible within our budget?
We are building a poor man’s TN 42, but could we make a poor man’s Lemax LX 70 superpower? I don’t mean to spam or troll, but if we have a chance, why don’t we try at least?
Before making a final call, The Miller is probably going to consider other aspects in addition to size. Such as:
- Cost per unit
- Precision of shape and dimensions
- Material used for the reflective surface
- Reflectively of the finished surface
- Lead time
- General attractiveness of the reflector
- Performance
This was considered early on but cost, complexity and the fact that using an LED would just not be ideal in such a case. For something to do significantly better then what we are working on it either needs a new LED that is not out now or an HID bulb.
An HID would boost output and KCD by an order of magnitude. The issue with that is cost would be extreme and it would not really be any different then any other HID light since you can’t have a fancy driver like we are used to with an HID.
We selected this form factor and specs due to it being a good middle ground between usefulness, power, throw, cost and usability.
And then i said i thought Shenzen Bo Rui Seiko ltd could do it, both the ‘test reflector’ (but what’s there to test actually?) and large numbers, any size you want.
It appears though that 120 x 93 (or 40 x 31) is more or less the normal (most used) ratio, so i’ll just work with that then.
That’s always aluminum vapor condensation on the surface, even with plastic reflectors.
It’s mainly the size and the precision of the shape i think.
But either way we’ll have to wait for the final word(s).
They can but like I have said before we have to wait until we find a manufacture. The manufacture assuredly already has a source for custom made reflectors and that is who they will want to use. Unless that source is more expensive or worse quality, that is the source we are best to use since they already have a working relationship.