The SYNIOSBEAM - CFT90 recoil thrower

Awesome :smiley: You gotta find a way to “shrink it” and make it the pocket thrower of the century :smiling_imp:
Nice work :+1:

Don’t forget to machine an attack-bezel for it!

After all, it wouldn’t be “tactical” without one! :smiling_imp:

NeverEnderBeam :person_facepalming:

I kinda like the current name. It has a kind of futuristic/scientific/outer space type of sound to it.
I didn’t associate it with the led the first time I red it.

You should contact Disney so they can put this in the next star wars film as a hand held death star with the newest beam technology called the syniosbeam. :smiley:

Oh yes :slight_smile: :+1:

True, that’s why I liked how unique syniosbeam was :confused:
If you google “recoilbeam” as one word however there are no other search results, so it’s still unique!
I might go wit that, or stick with the current name.


Would rather not have my forum username be part of it :stuck_out_tongue:


Thank you!


This is a good one but I’m not sure if I want to have it named after an LED, what if in the next few months something even better comes out from cree or osram?


Thanks :slight_smile: Some time in the near future I want to mod/build a single-cell compact EDC light that can do like 1-2km or more!


Haha, just hide this tactical flashlight in your pocket :slight_smile:


Yeah it’s a pretty unique name, and the the light was designed around that LED, so maybe it would be more appropriate if I just describe why the LED choice changed mid-build.
Rather than pretending I chose a different LED from the start.
Changing the name to “recoilbeam” would still allow me to explain why the beginning LED was changed while having a unique flashlight name.
Thanks for all the suggestions :slight_smile:

FIRST LUX MEASUREMENTS:
I did a very quick test last night at 140m distance, first I got ~5Mcd, but after one quick eyeballed focusing job I got it up to 7.5Mcd!
380 lux @ 140m (measured with a laser meter and also google maps).
Since the reflector collects light all the way to 85 degrees off-center from the LED, the lux is very sensitive to focus.
.
Once I get smaller tubing which doesn’t push on the reflector edge I will do more lux measurements at 500m, hopefully this distance will make the focus have less of an effect.
Instead of just guessing the focus like last night, I will also try adjusting the focus while someone (on a phone call) tells me the lux at 500m so that I know when I find the sweet spot.
Hopefully this can get me above 10Mcd which I was hoping for.
.
If I switch it to a CFT90 I will probably still get above 5Mcd, but the beam will be 5x brighter which will be really sweet.
The focusing will also be easier since the LED is 9x larger.





Comparison to the Optofire:

You can see that the reflector removes all chromatic aberration that the Optofire had, and also the yellowish tint that the wavien collar gives.
The beam doesn’t seem much brighter though, since the intensity per area is halved compared to the Optofire (which uses a wavien collar), and instead simply has more area making the beam wider.
After getting as much candela as possible with the black flat, I will switch it to CFT90 in order to get a more visible beam just for fun.

It definitely looks more sharply focused vs the last post pics. CFT-90……can’t wait to see the beam.

Your making Giggles look like this. :frowning:

Nice, now the farthest throwing led reflector thrower ever - by a large margin!

The second pic looks really cool!

The beam looks very similar to my light, but that was to be expected (in truth it’s actually much slimmer though). The focus looks a bit “off”.

BTW: you could improve the performance a tiny bit by putting a spherical mirror into the center hole of the reflector. :smiley:

EDIT: I just checked, you should be getting up to around 11-12Mcd. You’re still way off. Like I said - focussing is very, very difficult.

Yeah, even a barely visible brightness increase to my eyes brought the lux up from 5M to 7.5M, got some tuning to do for sure.

:frowning:

Thanks!
Yeah I was expecting over 12, however to get the focus right it will require a very long distance measurement, and then atmosphere might start affecting the results.
Will have to do the 500m test on a very clear night.
The only ways to make the focusing easier are to increase the LED size, which only makes a bit of a difference, or make the optic have a larger F number so that the mirror is farther away, sort of like in a mirror telescope.
This basically would make a clear die projection like a lens does, but then I lose the advantage of compactness and light collection.
The next light I build will be a longer focal length, either reflector or lens I don’t know yet.

And yeah I bet I can get 1 extra lux from adding a spherical reflector in the middle there xD

Something ain’t right here… From your picture aspherical light seems to throw further. For guys that don’t know aspherical is that yellow/green one… Aspherical beam seems thinner but also more intense to my eyes…

The picture was taken before I did the focusing, so the Syniosbeam is at about 5Mcd in that pic.
It was mostly to show the beam, not how far it throws.
If you point it at an object it is noticeably brighter in the hotspot, and the hotspot is also a lot larger.

I don’t think the measurement distance is the problem here. I think that the LED is not optimally positioned inside the reflector and that you need to find a way to look at the hotspot on an even surface in a similar distance (lets say 100m) or better yet the actual lux value while being able to fine tune the focus multiple times. It might take you hours, days even. Very small adjustments can make a very large difference.

X,Y focussing can be done be shifting the LEDs pcb around. Is that possible on your light? Maybe you need to enlargen the screw holes bit. When that is perfect you will need to adjust the Z-focus. This is probably the more important part. How will you do that? Copper foil between the PCB and the heatsink might be an option.

The CFT-90 will make it easier to reach a high Candela value, but will require a similar effort to get a perfect beam with the largest hotspot wioth max intensity.

As the distance increases the cones of light projected by the outer edges of the reflector diverge more, so it is much easier to get all cones to overlap at farther distances.
The LED is centered fine, and the Z axis is adjusted using 3 screws. This also changes the direction of tilt of the reflector which also needs to be fine tuned.

From 85 degrees the 1mm LED looks like a 0.09mm wide line, at 150mm distance from the reflector, so at 140m it would be an 81mm wide projection.
When focused perfectly, this would not give maximum lux because the light diameter is 280mm, so the projection from one side of the reflector will not overlap with the other side.

They would need to be at least 280mm wide in order to overlap at the center where the luxmeter can measure the total light.
.
As I mentioned in my collimation thread you can kinda cheat this by focusing it at a close range rather than at infinity, but this works best when using a lens because all the cones of light are almost the same size.
With this recoil reflector, the cones coming form the edge of the reflector are very slim due to the 85 degrees.
Focusing it to a spot closer than infinity would then require an ellipsoidal reflector rather than parabolic, because ellipsoidal reflectors are made to focus to a point closer than infinity.

For this reason I think it is better to simply go very far to let the cones grow in size until they overlap more and it is easier to read maximum lux with the luxmeter.
Of course it will still require proper focusing by hand for fine tuning, but this way it will also be focused for maximum throw rather than at a close point for a lux measurement :slight_smile:

Extremely nice work Enderman, nice to see and learn for myself.
About the pump, what kind of pump are you using, standard centrifugal self priming?
I have used the Laing DDC 1T in the past, which is a very good pump, and it cools itself using the cooling medium, but is is not self priming.

Just a small self-priming one from amazon.
Not the best quality but I couldn’t find any well known high quality brands this small.
It’s only ~1” diameter and like 2” long.

Not only would a DDC not fit, but it would require some adapters in order to get tubing to fit around the barbs, since my tubing is only 1/8” ID.
The self-priming is actually great, makes filling it waaay easier when you don’t have a reservoir and don’t need to worry about damaging the pump when first filling the loop :slight_smile:

Ok, so where’s the 3” version I need to replace the hood ornament on my Bomber? It would be a perfect fit.

Joking aside great work on an impressive build.

Haha thank you :slight_smile:

Build update

1) new tubing has arrived, now with 3/16” OD rather than 1/4” OD to not push on the reflector, also more flexible.

2) 48A CFT90 driver from lexel is finished being designed, and he will be working on building that over the next month or two. I still need to buy a CFT90 though, but there’s plenty of time.

3) I machined a special indent in the back panel of the Syniosbeam today, so that the driver does not interfere with the reflector focusing mechanism since it is a massive PCB.

4) I will be doing some small tweaks to the chassis in the next week or two and cleaning up the surfaces before I do a final fit test and then send off to be powdercoated or anodized.