Project Excalibur - Next Generation LED Thrower (many pics) - UPDATE 2018-01-24

I believe that guy. Acrylic plastic aspherical lenses I use are far better than glass one. I proved that to myself.

Wow that guy is just barely over the lux you got with the single reflector…
With some better cooling and driving the LED harder you could pass 1.6Mcd :stuck_out_tongue:
My Black Flat LED is being driven at 6A for max output.

Do you have a link to a forum thread or something about the Scheinwerfer?
I hear a lot of talk about it but have never seen any first-hand information about it, just claims of 3M cd which seems inaccurate.

About the throw record, I guess it depends on your definition of “portable”. Large fresnel lenses make it pretty easy to get huge throw numbers, but the beam is not so nice. What did you mod today? - #1519 by EasyB

Edit: of course the design and execution make a big difference to the usability of the light. For example my light in the link above I put together in an hour or so, but it’s flimsy and not so nice to use.

True, you can always just add a bigger lens and get a bigger number…
I guess we should be sorting these lights by category, like best thrower with <=150mm head, best thrower with <=100mm head, and stuff like that.

The_Driver’s searchlight here definitely wins in the sub-150mm reflector category :slight_smile:

Did not read the entire post yet, just quick reading, but man, what a cool project, must have cost you some energy, but the result is astonishing !
Very nice

There are a few problems with this statement.

- we would need every detail about his setup (what lens, what lux meter, how the setup looked etc. etc.)

- cheap ar-coated lenses from China often just have 96 percent transmission (uncoated normal glass has 92 percent, borosilicate has 94 percent)

  • UCLp lenses from flashlight lens (ar-coated acryllic lens) have 97 percent

- high quality ar coated glass lenses can have upwards of 99.5 percent (camera lenses for example)

During optical measurements it is almost impossible to get a tolerance under 10%. So it’s very difficult to do reliable measurements.

I can tell you: the difference between a UCLp and a normal uncoated lens can be seen with the naked eye when looking at a reflector. It looks much “shinier”.

Blocking the center of the lens only impacts the spill, this is because it is only blocking the direct light from the emitter as compared to the collimated light from the reflector. So that disc in the center is hurting nothing at all. :wink:

Oh, sorry, I forgot about djozz’s light. I never noticed your post. Yes, you guys have the record. :+1:

For me portable means the light is self contained and can be carried around when it is used. That is the bare minimum in my eyes.

Yes everything that is AR coated looks shinier…
If plastic(plexiglass,acrylic) works than it is worth a try cause they are dirt cheap.

Yes F1.2 camera lenses should have great light transmittance but they have special AR coatings that don’t go with flashlights. How do I know?
I have build aspherical flashlight(and IR illuminator) out of high quality Yukon 3x42 F1.2 lenses (triple lens system) and while it had ultra clear die projection(clearest projection I ever seen even clearer than B158) it seems that AR coatings on that lenses disables light transmittance(probably by not letting out blue color of emitter) resulting in poor kcd performance.

So maybe just maybe AR coating at some lenses is not that good as we expect.

There are different types of AR coatings.
For best performance it needs to be a VIS coating, if it is meant for IR or UV it will negatively affect performance in the visible light range (which is what flashlights make).
I’m not sure how you compared your lenses, did you buy some that had AR and some that didn’t?
An AR coated lens will always outperform a non-AR coated one if it is the correct type of coating.

That Yukon seems very cheap and probably has a special night vision coating.

I meant expensive camera lenses (Zeiss, Canon, sigma, nikon etc.). They know what they are doing.

Yeah it’s meant for IR, and it looks like a super cheap chinese night vision headset.
Real night vision gear costs thousands of dollars.

This is what you want for flashlights:

The plastic ones are slightly worse:

Yes that 3x42 “sunnranger” I build obviously had non appropriate coating for light build.
I just build and compare with commercial available stuff on lux meter. And of course “without-with” lux meter lenses method for reflectors. And not that I tried super coated lenses cause beside China available stuff KD and similar I did not have chance to try any better.

So please recommend where we could buy or try VIS cated lenses?

“An AR coated lens will always outperform a non-AR coated one if it is the correct type of coating.”

That is probably true. But how to know if we have right type of AR coating? And did you try any form of acrylic lenses?

Yes that 3x42 “sunnranger” I build obviously had non appropriate coating for light build.
I just build and compare with commercial available stuff on lux meter. And of course “without-with” lux meter lenses method for reflectors. And not that I tried super coated lenses cause beside China available stuff KD and similar I did not have chance to try any better.

So please recommend where we could buy or try VIS cated lenses?

“An AR coated lens will always outperform a non-AR coated one if it is the correct type of coating.”

That is probably true. But how to know if we have right type of AR coating? And did you try any form of acrylic lenses?

Edit:
I just saw you linked that Edmund lenses. Well at cost of more than 30$ with shipping they are bit expensive? But I guess only for personal and exclusive builds it is worth a try. Can we find something good and cheap? This is BLF and did you try any form of acrylic lenses?

Another one:
“Real night vision gear costs thousands of dollars. ”
LOL… :smiley: Wait when our member Seedstar sees this…
Imho you can make “real” night vision that will be same in performance as those expensive one at fraction of price. You only need high quality ccd or cmos sensor + quality camera lenses and bit of creativity. If you don’t believe me join to nightvisionforumuk.

I posted two links above, one is for glass and one is for acrylic.
Both are VIS AR coated.

If you get your lenses from flashlightlens.com then they are all made for VIS spectrum.

BTW we’re talking about plano-plano lenses here, also known as optical windows. That’s what the maxabeam head has on the front of the reflector.
But the same stuff applies if you’re using plano-aspheric lenses for a lens thrower flashlight.

Thanks,

We tend to post at same time :slight_smile:

So for those KD and similar China stuff AR lenses we mostly use here. Did you tried and what coating do they have?

Never tried them. I would assume they are VIS AR coatings if they are made for flashlights.
Probably much worse quality though than the type of stuff you get from edmund optics or flashlightlens.com.

It is certainly possible that a crappy AR coated glass lens has worse transmission than a high quality non-coated acrylic one, you never know with that stuff from china.
This is why I try to get my stuff from more reliable sources like high end optics manufacturers or mountain electronics and places like that.

My light has this: FlashlightLens.com - Your source for high quality glass and acrylic flashlight lenses. - Flashlightlens.com - Online Store

Why?
Because they are known to be good and they offer custom cut sizes without being really expensive. I also thought they were robust, but…

Edmundoptics is serious manufacturer while flashlightlens is distributor of quality stuff? Shipping is something that will kill most of users that are not from USA.

So acrylic lenses can have 97% of transmittance and they are probably more durable than glass one.

My acrylic lenses I use as preccolimator in aspherics seems to have 100% of light transmittance without AR coating??? How I stupidly concluded that? :smiley: Cause without them or with them I have same result on lux meter(with them I have 100% larger beam of course)
And sometimes they are even scratched but it seems that they do not loose on performance because of that.

I want to say acrylic or plexiglass(I did not tried plexiglass yet) is worth a try weather for plano plano or plano convex?

And that middle thing on this The Driver build is something similar that MEM want to try before he disappeared. He told me he can find a way to fit RA on reflector lights and enhance a throw.

Thanks Dale, that clarifies things, feels strange though, so to reduce spill people could stick something on the GT right in front of the led
Well The Driver scratch my input on making a lens yourself then. Besides I can understand that with this build you want the best you can get :slight_smile:

Are you talking about some other flashlight? Not the maxabeam you just built, right?
The minimum order quantity for a custom size lens is 100, so even though each lens might be cheap it ends up costing hundreds or thousands of dollars.
A custom 100mm lens at $.15 per mm is $15, but with a MOQ of 100 it becomes $1500…
Cheaper to buy something from edmund optics TBH.