Welcome to BLF RC-Lights
Great work!
Well my congratulations to The Driver and of course to you Michael. You are expert machinist and the driver is future doctor. His idea and your machining work created something spectacular so my hat down :+1:
Yup, I realized that and edited my post 
Confusing!
I checked all distributors, nobody has them in stock.
I assume it is because of how recent it is, the datasheet was just made in 2017.
I’ll keep an eye out to see if they get in stock some time, and I’ll let you know if they do. If you see it in stock before me, then you let me know too 
Use Octopart.com, it searches all distributors like mouser, digikey, arrow, and many others so you can save time without going to every site.
“UW Q8WP” is what to search for, if anyone else wants to watch for it.
What a fantastic post! It was great to read about the thoughts and challenges and then BAM! Such cool beamshots!
An amazing build and I even learned a few things, though I must admit that most of the technical stuff is far above me.
It is not so much trying to build a useful light, but to build the one you wanted to build
Well done there!
Phil
Dam, this makes the BLF GT like a joke
Impressive
Just finished reading through the whole post
It’s a pretty big coincidence that we both build a light with the black flat at almost the same time
I am almost finished my build, just waiting on some liquid metal thermal paste.
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“Minimum distance for accurate measurement of luminous intensity:
Many of you know that one cannot measure the true luminous intensity (throw) of a thrower in 1m distance it the value is supposed to be accurate. The reason for this is that in this distance in some lights the reflector is not completely lit up by the LED as seen from the sensor of the lux meter. One has to go further away and adjust the value for the longer distance. TLF member sma once studied this in more detail here (link is external). We both have the theory that it depends on the difference in size between the reflector and the LED. I have tried to calculate this for my light based on his results with an Olight SR-95 UT.”
I have done some testing, it’s pretty interesting actually.
If you take a piece of paper, poke 3 small holes in it, and put it in front of the reflector/lens of a flashlight you will get 3 separate squares (the die image) projected onto a wall.
In “infinite focus”, which is what you want for ideal maximum throw, these three squares will be centered exactly at the 3 points.
To get a proper lux reading when focused like this, the lux meter needs to be placed at the center, and the flashlight needs to be far enough away that all squares overlap in the middle, including the ones from the outer edges of the lens/reflector.
With this exaggerated huge LED example, all squares would overlap at 1.1m (so you would measure slightly farther than that)
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However, with a focusable lens or reflector, you can actually change the focus and make all squares overlap at the luxmeter.
When they are all overlapping is when you get the “sharp die projection” image.
This allows you to take the measurement at a closer distance and get the same cd value when you calculate it back to 1m.
You need to keep in mind though that focused at the luxmeter will not give maximum throw. It should be collimated using that template I posted above for best throw.
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For your flashlight, I calculated a minimum distance of 28.5m when it is collimated correctly.
If you want to know how I calculated this stuff just let me know, I can make a separate topic explaining everything.
To measure the maxabeam, I’m not sure how far it would need to be, because unlike an LED the small burning point is not all the same intensity like the surface of an LED is.
That’s a neat method with the 3 holes in the paper, enderman. The condition that there is some overlap of all three squares is equivalent to all of the reflector area being used. Like if you looked straight into the reflector at that distance it would be filled with LED/light.
Exactly
I figured this out because you said that about looking into the reflector and seeing yellow.
All I can say is…Hi and welcome Michael. I greatly admire your skills and abilities. You must be a very patient person.
Wow !
Very well done! From concept to application, brains to brawn as it were, and success in the end to make it all worthwhile!
Michael, your machine work is excellent and I hope one day to be able to get at least in the ball park, still on the learning curve with the lathe and now in a long delay from surgery but very ready to get back out there!
Mill work is beyond me for now, but obviously it’s the necessary other half to lathe work, combined there’s simply nothing you can’t accomplish and I love seeing it presented! Thank you both for all the effort , quality stuff right there! 
This must be the farthest throwing LED+reflector flashlight in existence right?
BTW to prevent your lenses from cracking in the future I would suggest buying some adhesive neoprene tape that’s 1/32 or 1/16” thick, then cutting a thin strip and putting that where the front bezel holds the lens.
It basically acts like an o-ring, putting soft pressure that isn’t too concentrated, and it creates a waterproof seal.
It has adhesive on only one side, so it won’t stick to the lens and make it hard to open.
If you want you can also put some on the other side of the lens, so that the edges of the lens are sandwiched between two layers of foam.
Very nice project and a great write-up. Great job, Michael and The_Driver!
Amazing build , nice nighttime bomber searchlight!
So it is 1,5 milion candela reflector light and once when we’ll have commercial available LE UW Q8WP Osram emitters it will even surpass that results.
I am blown away by this. simply wow.
Very nice outcome, & I enjoyed the detailed build post.
I can appreciate how difficult it is to focus such a large reflector on such a small point!
I think I’ll have to update one or two of my throwers with an Osram black…
:+1: 
I might have missed it but a few questions:
1 what is the depth of the reflector /or/ depth led mounted inside the reflector from the top?
2 what is this black thing in the center of the lens?
The LED is a 3V one right? Why choose this complicated driving engine?
Can you / do you want to give an estimate on the costs of this monster?