5th Annual BLF OL Comp Build. Can A Flashlight Flash? The Naked Truth. Update post 151. Night shots added. 16.12.171

I’m charging batteries at the moment for a shoot out but will have to wait for the weekend for this to happen as its still not dark here when I go to bed.
I need a new spot for long distant beam shots as my last place is now out of bounds.

An awesome feat of craftsmanship - well done! :beer: :beer:

Do those batteries yell out “Charge!” when they are ready to use? :person_facepalming:

OMG!

Saturn V thrusters !

Think Steve might have a fascination with space somewhere in the back of his mind. I posted in the build thread that the one with the wood accents(post 125, last picture, far right) looks like it might be something from the TV show “Lost in Space”.

I wish they did. The bludgers have been taking lessons from the sacked assistants and do this most of the day. :stuck_out_tongue:

This light wont be taking of with anything like the thrust from those monsters. :slight_smile:
I heard yesterday that moon travel is back on the agenda in the States.

I’ve still got to set the driver up to its final settings. I’ve set the step down for a conservative 50 degrees C. In a room at around 25 degrees C it runs for 12 minutes before step down. This is with the 3 leds running at six amps. The light feels slightly less hotter than this temp so will play with the settings more at a later date.

Like many kids my age at the time Lost In Space was cutting edge TV in all its black and white glory. :slight_smile:
I dont know how they put up with that mischievous Mr Smith for so long. :heart_eyes:

On a side note I got onto Google earth and sussed out a new place around the corner for night shots. On scoping the area out 520 meter pictures should be possible. All going well I’ll get there Friday night.

You’ve really outdone yourself this time. I don’t even know what to say. It’s beautiful!

Also, it’s powered by Spartans. That brings back memories…

Thanks TK. When I saw the Sparton wrappers at FT I knew straight away they were the ones I was after. :slight_smile:
I wasn’t sure how they would line up in the battery tube slots as they were roughly marked out with a texta in the mill and machined to nothing in particular. :person_facepalming:

I was carrying out some extreme testing last night with the leds at 6.6 amps each and the temp cutoff set at 80 degrees C.
At the 22 minute mark the light just switched off. Head temp was around 60 degrees C.
It appears theres a short somewhere. I’m thinking that maybe a fan wire melted through as I have no idea what temp rating it was.
Needless to say a strip down is required. Hopefully the driver and leds are ok.
Up to this point I was really happy with the way the torch was performing as output had only sagged around 10%.
Lumens output is right up there with the Q8.

I know the feeling :person_facepalming: , didn’t replace the fan wires with silicone did ya?
Other than that sounds great :slight_smile:

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had my custom-made lights break during use (or while testing their limits). Usually it’s the ones I use for development, because the wires are stressed and moved around frequently, so the contacts break. A couple days ago a contact pad broke off one of my dev drivers, so I have to build a whole new one. Had to repair another one earlier today. I’m thinking I’ll design a new PCB instead, with greater physical durability.

I hope yours will be an easy fix.

The torch is back up and running after a strip down of the naked light to find the problem. My assumption above about the wiring on the fan melting causing a short was not the problem unfortunately. The wires were upgraded though when I reassembled it with 24 AWG silicone wires.
The problem was me. The driver pocket was .25mm not deep enough for the driver to sit flush with the top with the adhesive backing on the driver. When I tightened the earth screw all was ok until the torch was very hot. The glue gave way on the opposite side of the earth screw as the driver was acting as if it had a lever on one side.
This allowed the driver to overheat with dire consequences.
Luckily I had one spare driver.

Thursday after work I took a daytime picture of my chosen 500 meter range for the night shots. Rocked up there last night and you wouldn’t read about it, the building 500 meters away was lit up like daytime with security lights.
After exhaustive searching with a very patient wife by my side another location was found, not the 500 meters I was after but 230 meters, to the trees. The white box is 75 meters away while the fence is 93 meters away.

Fistly the prototype Q8 I built up. This has about 10% less output than the production version.

Monster Torch. DX large reflector with MTG2 at 5 amps.

C83. Three x C8 reflectors with XML2 leds at 6 amps each.

Old Lumens Tribute Torch. LUM 5-90 reflector and XHP70 led running somewhere above 10 amps.

And finally the Naked Torch.

This is the run time I was carrying out at the time of the blow up. The bottom line numbers multiplied x 2 will give you minutes and the line is the output.
Head temp at 22 minutes was approximately 60 degrees. Each led was running at 6.5 amps.

The output looks extreme! Is it as ‘blue’ as in the picture, or is that just the way it turned out?

It does look quite a cool/cold tint compared to the other torches. Other than tint the beam looks similar to the C83. Is there a difference in lux between the two?

Thats a whole lotto light.
Soz to hear about the breakdown
Sure you will find the fault in no time

To me the look from memory appears similar to the XML2 0A that IOS used to sell. The wife who was looking on said there was a slight blue tint. Definitely no green here. :slight_smile: They are advertised as being 6500K
I think these are the same ones that djozz did his testing on. These came from KD quite awhile ago.

The C83 XML2 tint is 2C while the MTG2 in the Monster torch and the XHP70 in the Tribute torch are both 5000K 3C tint. In reality they look quite different. The 3C XHP70 would have to be the nicest tint I’ve seen in a led.

Found the fault. It was all mine. One expensive one. :person_facepalming: