The SYNIOSBEAM - CFT90 recoil thrower

Thank you :slight_smile:
It’s probably the most complex project I’ve done, due to how limited the space is.

Had to restore my password and log in, just to compliment you on this project. Been following it, and I like it, I like it a lot!
Also have a question: What was the reason you went with a pretty thick, (1/4”?) backplate and not a thinner one?

Another thing, I saw you mentioned that something was touching the reflector edge earlier, have you solved that? Because if there is just the slightest pressure on these reflectors, it will deflect them and you get bad performance. Believe me, I know :cry:

They can report it but they’d have to find him first. That’s a large apt building with many others around. In a plane going 400+ miles per hour unless he had it on when they came around. You’d probably have better luck finding a needle in a haystack

Thank you!
The backplate holds all the electronics as well as the reflector, I though it would be nice to have it the same thickness as the tube body so that everything is the same, even though it is a bit overkill.
Better safe then sorry! Especially if this light is going to be carried around a lot.

And yeah there was a coolant tube slightly under 1/4” OD between the reflector and body which pushed the edge of the reflector and completely deformed the spot.
I had no idea they were so flexible! Luckily it caused no damage and just went back to it’s original shape, and now makes a much more clean die projection.
I replaced the tubing with some 3/16” tubing which doesn’t touch and is also softer, and now there is no problem.

PS- looking forward to your new carbon fiber superthrower :wink:

What about the GT mod with the CFT-90?Is the driver ready?And finally, is some guy ready to try this mod? Because I wait to see beamshots from CFT-90 as well as XHP70.2 leds,so as to make a decision which of the two to put in my GT, sending it to giorgoskok,(who is also a Greek member), to do the job,because I know his work from other mods he has done for me.

Yes, you do have quite a bit of stuff on the backplate, so in that regard the extra thickness certainly doesn’t hurt. And these reflectors are indeed very “springy” something I found out the hard way when I bonded one ever so slightly deformed (less than 0.5mm) and lost 50% performance, and the beam had a rectangular spot. :person_facepalming: The reflector itself was perfectly fine, but I had to return it to Phoenix and have it reinstalled.

Anyhow, I was wondering about another thing. How do you think the luminance on the CFT-90 respond to beaming light on the core, from a secondary light source? Compared to just increasing the current?
What I was thinking here, was if you installed a secondary LED in the vertex hole, with an aspheric lens, plus a bi or plano convex lens in front, and with the correct focal lenght, you could focus all the light from the secondary LED, directly on the core of the main LED. At some point, it would just overheat and burn up, but this stuff isn’t my field of expertise. Thoughts?

I will answer here:

It all depends on if you want to make the entire die brighter or just a smaller portion in the center?

Focussing an LED on such a small point will be difficult if you want high efficiency. A 450nm laser would be much easier to focus, but it’s more difficult to get a uniform beam (I have tried someting like this here, it’s in German).

If you want to make the whole die much brighter you will need a lot of blue light (similar to the CFT-90 itself). This would require much more power, big batteries, powerful cooling etc.

I don’t have a GT, I’m putting a CFT90 in this flashlight, not a GT :stuck_out_tongue:
Maybe you posted in the wrong thread?

Mhm, I specifically asked phoenix to make and install the mount for me, they did a great job.

You can double the intensity by adding more light to the core, however you lose a lot of efficiency since you would need something like 3 additional CFT90s in order to get a 2x improvement.
Similar to how a wavien collar collects an additional 75% more light and doubles the intensity.
The best option is to use lasers to excite phosphor, as they can make a very small spot of high intensity blue light.

Ok, so it does have decent potential then. In this case, I wasn’t necessarily thinking of doubling the luminance by adding extra CFT-90’s because of both power requirements and cost, but rather giving it a measurable boost by adding a less powerful and cheaper secondary LED. On the other hand, would it be worth the extra complexity? Probably not. Not sure you even have room for a lens stack like that.

Enderman, what reflector coating did you choose?

It seems yes.Mea culpa…

Haha yeah, there is like 5mm between the bottom of the reflector and aluminum plate :stuck_out_tongue:

Aluminum.
Protected silver was way too expensive and also delicate.
Rhodium is worse than aluminum and only necessary for stuff like short arcs.

With MgF2 overcoat?
Out of curiosity how much would silver cost?

“We generally do not coat with silver. It’s somewhat problematic to coat and even with an overcoat it isn’t very durable. Silver is very active in a normal air environment. The price would be roughly twice that of a single piece with aluminum. ”

-Phoenix Electroforms

I’m not sure if mine is overcoated, it probably is just plain aluminum. I didn’t ask for any special additional coatings since aluminum is pretty durable as long as there isn’t a ton of UV like from an arc lamp.

On Optiforms I see that their MgF2 has a little higher reflectivity than their protected alu (they don’t do unprotected):

https://www.optiforms.com/optical-coatings/protected-aluminum-aluminum-quartz/
~93.5% vs ~90%.
Elsewhere on BLF I saw comments that uncoated alu oxidises quickly and what we can really expect is 85%.
Could you shed some light on it?

No idea, I haven’t used Optiforms.
I wasn’t going to pay double to get my reflector from them.

This is the info that Phoenix gave me a while ago:

“Silver is more reflective in the visible than rhodium. We have many customers do a google search for the most reflective materials. Silver always rises to the top. We recommend vacuum deposited aluminum. It is far less expensive. It is less reactive in the atmosphere. It has a reflectance in the 92-95% range which is acceptable for just about anything other than sensitive measuring equipment.
We do provide vacuum deposited aluminum with a SiO2 overcoat as well as rhodium.”

Maybe the coating I got is AlSiO2.
EDIT- yeah just checked the specs document, it is SiO2 coated aluminum.

It says “PA17.02AQ” on my invoice.

Thanks

I just found your build threads on your so called “flashlight” builds Enderman, I must say I greatly admire your engineering skills and workmanship on your projects. Seriously great work. :beer:

+1 …… :+1: … He quiet frankly amazes me with the things he comes up with.

Better add me here as well though he does know anyway. :slight_smile: