You could use Blender. Or FreeCAD. Or LibreCAD. Or OnShape. Or several others. If you don’t want to do a full 3D model, I find Inkscape is good for quick 2D stuff. Its grid options make it easy to build accurate scale models.
Yes…I know that drawing lights with 1 mm resolution is barbaric.
I just never got the motivation to learn something different.
After all, what I draw is good enough to show the idea.
It is good enough to make me encounter most problems.
Regardless what tool I use, if anyone was to actually manufacture one of those lights, they would CAD it anyway.
This is not good enough to draw an angle light though.
I need 3D to figure out internal layout. I’d like to draw one one day. Maybe then I’ll get motivated to learn some better tools.
When I see the word ‘Donation’ in the thread title, I remember the only flashlight I have seen in the Third World village near me.
It was a broken, stubby version of the now famous light we see everybody trying to sell,…this one with bulb battery, plastic zoom lens, gritty switch and corrosion from the penlight cells, (not even alkyleaks).
A foil covered piece of cardboard with a rusty spring on one side, an LED of sorts seemingly glued (?) to the other….it was the the owner’s pride and joy while it lasted.
Well, if you’re using GIMP, then you probably have a harder time penciling pixel-by-pixel than you would have just drawing a nice shape with smooth lines and curves.
But the long story is that I was a huge Windows fan. I invested a lot of time into learning its internals.
Then Vista came.
I didn’t have the same complaints the most had.
I complained about not being able to load unsigned drivers of my own.
I complained about the existence of privileged processes. They are ones that can do anything with the machine, but even admin can’t touch them (unless they hack system protections, which isn’t hard really). The mechanism was created to facilitate Digital Restrictions Management. Who is the boss of my PC, me or media companies? For MS it was the latter.
I complained about changes to the UI that I liked.
I complained about dropped backwards-compatibility.
Then Windows 7 came. Technically, it was Vista SP1. It only fixed the most glaring problems people had. But after Vista, they loved it.
I didn’t. It didn’t fix any of the most important problems that I had. And I knew that no future version would.
Took me a year to decide that I couldn’t use XP forever.
I left the Windows world and I’m glad that I did.
I have wanted to move to linux full time for years but sadly I need adobe, DXO, Sony vegas, Solidworks and a few other windows only programs and have not been able to figure out a way to use them on linux so far.
Although with the new system I am putting together now I am thinking about running linux and using a virtual machine for these programs since I should have the horsepower for it. Anyone tried this?
I really would like to put my Mom on a virtual machine as well, she would fall in love with the ability to save the machine state so she could work on separate projects and save them for later with all the needed documents already open. Same for me really.
I have been using virtual box but it seems to lack directX and does not allow some programs to install properly. I have heard VMware is better but not tried it personally myself.
OK, I decided to discuss some of the design decisions. I recognise that some that I mentioned here are totally uncontroversial and that others lack that luck. But they all have some tradeoffs involved and I wanted to bring them closer.
1. Triple
less output than quad
more peak cd than quad (though if the leds were driven to the same level they would be about equal)
with linear driver, marginally less sustained lm
more sustained cd
quad optics could be lower
lower cost
less board space taken
OK, I just wanted something throwier than a quad
2. Khatod TIR lens
unknown efficiency, probably lower than that of reflector
seeing the CRXed cups , I suspect that efficiency is quite low
it nevertheless gives much higher cd/lm than f.e. Ledil Cute
it is very low for the diameter, reducing the light’s size
nice beam profile
available in pebbled and frosty variants too
alternative: Chun Kuang M312
0.9 mm shorter
smaller cups
less throw
not CRXed - better efficiency?
clear, pebbled, frosty - whatever
alternative: Ilenstech ILENS61-S34
1.3 mm shorter
1 mm smaller diameter
siamesed a lot - good throw at the expense of beam shape?
not CRXed - better efficiency?
clear, pebbled, frosty - whatever
3. Without glass in the front
more prone to scratches
but AR coating scratches too
anyway, it is replaceable
less prone to breaking
3% higher output
1.5 mm shorter and over 4g lighter
does any flashlight come with antistatic and/or hydrophobic coating? This possibility is lost.
4. 21700
alternative: 26700
would be smaller than the head too, but thicker, heavier, worse for EDC
for max power, compatible with 21700
alternative: 26650
as thick as 26700, marginally lighter
no 21700 support
with DQG tail it’s not any shorter than 26700
alternative: 18650
less comfortable to hold
a little less size, weight
would enable 18350 support
18350 unibody + 18650 extension?
resign from unibody?
much smaller capacity
4. Dedomed LH351D
fairly cheap
single chip (good beam shape)
non-flipped chip (no tint shift, good throw when flattened)
the most efficient non-flipped single chip that we know
though XHP35 deserves a mention as optically it works as if it was a single chip. And at high power levels it’s more efficient than LH351D.
nice tints
available in wide range of colour temps and CRIs
high Vf
lower peak output, especially with weak battery
fairly high efficiency with linear driver
better sustained performance
falls out of regulation quickly
but thermals make it drop output quickly too
since it’s a triple, Vf is actually not that high
fairly small footprint for the performance
5. DQG tail
light length changes with battery length - never longer than needed
large battery contact - minimal resistance
no spring and related resistance
~2 mm shorter than PCB + spring, several grams lighter too
some are worried of battery safety
I’ve heard about some problems with Tinys, none was battery-related
TorchLAB ZeroRez is somewhat similar
battery rattles slightly when physically locked-out
6. Texas Commander / LD4 style driver
low height
little board space taken
fairly low cost
OK efficiency
unmatched regulated power for the price
unmatched regulated power for the size
very high unregulated power
7. Driver + LEDs on a single board
smaller!
short thermal path from LEDs to MCU
though some drivers shorten the path with extra thermometers on the MCPCB
some driver components need good cooling too
but other need to be rated for high-temperature work
Driver plus LEDs on a single board isn’t hard. Some manufacturers do it to make the lights more compact and/or for other reasons. I’ve even made a few drivers with LED pads on board. Isolating stuff is just a matter of “drawing it that way” when designing the PCB. If your design is very complex or needs to cram a lot into a tiny space, you can get extra routing room by using four-layer boards instead of the normal two-layer boards used by most drivers. It does cost significantly more, though.