Maxtoch XSWORD L2K // 2000 Meter Laser Tech Thrower // Full Review

This one, 10 watts. There are probably a few others as well by now.

Back when I was testing the Thrunite I used a green laser to aim the bracket on my tripod so the Thrunite would be as close to centered as I could make it when testing at 1 mile. Here’s a shot showing the amount of light the Thrunite put on an 8 1/2” x 11” sheet of paper at that one mile…

Same piece of paper as illuminated by my green laser…

The hot spot of the laser was around 20’ in diameter at a mile… and here’s a shot of my blue laser shining across the same mile of water…

Divergence patterns are different for the different kinds of lasers, so that too would be an issue when it comes to the blending of RGB and trying to make the result end in throw.

My wife was across the lake with the tripods holding the sheet of paper and the camera, she wore the proper eye safety goggles and as such, really had issue determing the placement of the laser for aiming. So there’s also that, with the proper eye protection the beam is nearly invisible….

Holy smokes that’s one tight and powerful beam 2100! Scary I bet, trying to use it and not burn anything!

Yep, give them LPFers some budget and i think using Sanwu as an eg, 7+7 = 14 watts shouldn’t be too big of an issue.

So lets just hope this LEP and phosphor efficiency goes up in time to come! :slight_smile:

I’ve been quietly stating, for some time now, that “LIRP” (laser illuminated remote phosphor), or whatever you want to call it, is the future, at least for vehicle headlamps.

BMW, Audi, Hella, Osram certainly think so.

Combined with clever tricks with LED arrays.

You won’t get it in the USA for many years because of vested interests, protectionism, stupidity, creaking bureaucracy and “not invented here” attitudes.

Meanwhile, if you can afford it, it is transforming car headlights, in the EU and almost everywhere else. I have the dynamic LED stuff, not the lasers, and it is great.

Bring it on.

Fahren fahren fahren on the Autobahn. And so necessary where cruising when e.g. 150 mph is normal, and much much faster happens.

Take a really good look in your rear-view mirror before pulling out to over-take, in a normal car.

Hmmm, think I’ll crack this one back open and see what the voltage to the laser board is and get a current reading at the board while I’m at it, find out just what the driver is doing. Should be converting 8.4V to 6V but even so, 1.35A at the tail indicates the laser is making some power, can it withstand a bit more? Would a bit more actually be worth an out the front gain? Obviously a lot of throw is being achieved with surprisingly small lumens, so a little bump in the lumens may not really increase throw all that much but shorten the life of the phosphor exponentially, so where are the values in small gains? Hmmmm…. makes one wonder.

When I’ve tested zoomies in my lightbox I’ve seen wide angle give high lumens but the tight zoom drop a LOT! That said, this laser activated light actually only produces 320 lumens with the lens removed, 373 with the lens on. More things that make you go hmmmmm….

Can’t this light also run on one battery?

No

The Polish guy used a one cell tube with 2 18350’s. :wink:

If you remove the lens, just as much light is blocked by the housing, so the lumens do not go up, unlike a zoomie where the housing is slided away to under the led when zooming out. Further, most pipe-like light measuring devices do not fully integrate: with equal light output, throwers read a bit higher than flooders.

Okay.

I see what you’re saying Jos, but I also know that lenses block a percentage of the light so it’s expected to see more light with the lens removed. In this case though, it’s a difference between floody light and a shadow vs tightly controlled narrow light.

These light tubes are different in that they are designed as P traps for large commercial drains. The ID is 4 1/4”, the curve is not a typical 90º. More expensive, but the results are different. Texas Ace uses 90º pipe bends in a 3” Sch 40 if I’m not mistaken, a different product altogether. And our P trap lights are painted internally to further aid in the integration. Painted black externally as well, although I don’t know why as the Sch 80 pipe is thick walled enough to allow no pass through.

I know mine is calibrated with no less than 25 ANSI rated high end lights, and over the past 4 or 5 years I’ve seen results from out-of-box lights match the ANSI ratings admirably, in all sorts of lights, low end budget lights to extremely expensive name brand multi emitters. Literally 500+ lights have been in my light box, with the numbers always a close enough match to the big name ANSI ratings (lights that come with Owners Manual’s that show the big green multi tens of thousands of dollars spheres they test with) to cause no worry about deviation.

To be honest, the constant questioning of the light box is tiresome… it’s proven out over a wide disparity of lights, speaks volumes in and of itself.

Completely random off-topic post, but if you want to hear one of the pioneers of electro-pop synth music you could do worse than checkout Kraftwerk at Kraftwerk - Autobahn ( Longversion ), das Original. - YouTube

It was very good indeed. And so syncopated, despite the machines.

Is there any sound?Because I can’t hear any.Also,who has made this and what diode is used,as I know that the stronger ones give 7W max.

I’d like to find a way to lay the whole light testing equipment question to rest, once and for all. Do we need to communicate with a manufacturer and send a light around the world to different testers and see where the differences fall? Or do we need to send a select sampling of lights to a manufacturer so they can be tested in one of those expensive green spheres? I’m going to bet my money that no sphere, regardless of cost, integrates every light properly without adjustments being made to the color and output type. Simple as that. A $25,000 sphere is going to be wrong as often as my own P trap light box, at the end of all the testing. Maybe not by as much margin, but not 100% accurate either. I’m also willing to bet that any given light, if given 100 samples off the line from random selection, is going to show a lot of different results in the same high end sphere. So again, this is not a carved in stone science where a particular light makes a particular output all the time. Given that, and given your own testing Jos with multiple builds and meters, I think it’s safe to say we are after a reference point, and a reference point alone. People need to understand that their lights are going to vary, with different cells, different days, different emitters, different lenses, variation is the only constant when it’s all said and done.

And if we did all that testing, found a foregone conclusion, the question would still come up over and over and over… such is life, right?

So, here we are again, with my P trap light box (and robo819’s, built by the same 2 guys) being said to have high numbers for throwers, yet testing low against ANSI ratings from the manufacturer… 373 lumens against 500. So much for theories…

I’m sure that the pipe-design as a way to measure total light output will work well as long as the radiation pattern of the light source (beam shape) does not show too much variation (most flashlights produce some sort of hotspot with spill around it), but with patterns much different from that (zoomie in spot modus or a pure mule) I do expect that you will see incorrect readings to some extend. With this Maxtoch with and without lens you are testing the limits of your measuring device!

I’m beginning to want to get me one of these pipe-devices to check the integration quality myself, compared to integrating spheres.

A big difference in this Schedule 80 4” P trap is cost, the P trap alone is $80! As a P trap, it doesn’t have the sweeping 90º turn but instead it has a sharp bend. And the thicker Schedule 80 design helps as well I would assume. Simpler and cheaper to assemble a light box from 90º elbows, but maybe not as effective. Can build a 3” Sch 40 for less than $20 or thereabouts.

Our in here, (Me, Robo, Richard, Tom E) is that one of the two brothers has worked in a plumbing supply house for 25+ years! :wink: The unique situation is that both brothers are flashaholics, one liking hot rod balls to the wall lights and the other liking high end high quality high cri lights. So they had a very wide sampling of lights to use to calibrate these boxes, having over 400 lights between them at the time.

Just buy a gym-ball, fibre-glass the outside, not forgetting the non-stick coating, let it set, remove the bladder, then paint it internally with whatever (that is the important decision, BaO would be nice, but unlikely to be readily available.)

Set up some sort of baffle, and fire away. Into a sphere.

Bits of bent toilet pipe aren’t really going to do the same job.

Easy for me to say, but I’ve never actually tried it, because I’ve never had a reason to worry about precise numbers.

Nor do I care much about numbers from these contraptions, just what I see with my imperfect eyes.

Yes, check your settings. And settle back for a good listen. Which was the whole point of my link, but probably went “whoosh” over the heads of most :wink: