[REVIEW] Acebeam W10. 1KM of throw, in your front pocket. 21700/18650, USB-C charging.

These effects are seperate. The additional light coming out of the opening is created by the blue part of the spectrum of the LED hitting it again and being converted to more yellow-green light (it changes direction after the conversion, it’s scattered). This increases the intensity and also dramatically changes the tint (more yellow-green).

If you used a mirror (collar) that doesn’t reflect the blue part of the spectrum there wouldn’t be a large increase in Luminance. You would just cut off 75% of the LEDs total emitted light.

Changing the tint doesn’t add brightness though, so it is infact pulling light that would be in the spill and putting into the main beam.

I don’t think it would cut brightness, unless your converting light that’s not in our visible spectrum into seeable and usable light. But Led’s Don’t have that

This is a great torch. Buy it and don’t worry (just don’t expect much spill). lol

The light that the wavien collar collects would not be spill.
It would hit the inside of the head of the flashlight and be completely wasted.
This light does not come out of the flashlight because it does not go through the lens.

A collar reflects the light back at the LED projecting the exact same image of the die on the LED.
It does not make a smaller spot or a different beam, it just makes the LED brighter, and the projected spot brighter.

The spill of a beam is the light that hits the inside of the head, so why are you saying no? I’ll reword it one more time. Your Wavian collar, collects the light, aims it at the lens. Preventing waste, in essence projecting it onto the lens.
So please stop saying it doesn’t. You are redirecting output so less is wasted, I don’t no why you keep disagreeing then rewording it. Makes me feel like I’m dyslexic up in here.

It’s definitely more efficient then using a small aspheric lens close to the led, then a second one for final focus. It’s doing the same job just more efficiently. If you don’t believe me that’s fine, it’s an idea someone much smarter than me came up with close to a decade ago.

No, it collects light and aims it back to the led die. In the die most of this light is absorbed and converted to the different colour and then send out again in random direction. Please accept that that is a completely different, and much more going on both physically and optically than simply “collects and aimed at the lens”.

You are using the wrong technical terms. Spill is part of the light that has already exited the flashlight. The term has no meaning inside the light. It only pertains to lights that have a normal, front-facing reflector (spill is the light that doesn’t hit such a normal reflector, it directly exits the flashlight).

The collar only works because the phosphor of the LED is excited additionally by redirected blue light. The phosphor is not a mirror, it doesn’t reflect a lot of light.

The Wavien collar collects 75% of the total amount of light that a domeless LED emits. The blue part of this 75% re-exites the Phosphor which doubles the Luminance. Thus the 25% of the total light that directly exits the collar (and can then hit a lens) is effectively doubled.

This means the collar is around 50% efficient in terms of lumens (total amount of light).

To understand how it works you need to understand what Luminance is/means.

The exit of the collar is smaller, and as such does cut the directionality of the light, negating most of 180 degrees, so stop saying no. Put the wave an collar on without the lens and look at the wall, then take it off. You’ll see a huge difference in the direction of the beam.
Especially on the scale of the light cannon.

Taking a 180 degrees and turning it into 25% of that is still focusing the beam though, whether theirs more going on or not. I’ve never questioned the efficiency of the collar. Only suggesting that it does infact refocus the light direction.

…is not focussing, it is called cutting off.

It is impossible to discuss matter if not the accepted terminology is followed, discussions are already hard enough when correct terms are used.

Fair enough, you tried to help and I appreciate it

:+1:

  1. “spill” is light that comes out of a flashlight without hitting a forward-facing reflector. A lens flashlight has no spill regardless of whether you use a collar or not. The light hitting the inside of the head is not spill because it does not exit the lens.

2) The collar reflects light back at the LED, not at the lens.

The entire point of the wavien collar is that it does not aim any light at the lens.
This is why the lumen output can increase without making the spot larger (which is what a secondary lens does) and more lumens + same area = higher intensity

I think you simply don’t understand what the terms mean, that’s all, not your fault.

Yeah, I have further concerns about that test….which may be because I hardly know anything about optics. But for me the superiority of single lens optics is just not clear…

  • is it optimal to have both lenses of the same power?
  • is it optimal to have both lenses of the same size?
  • A single lens with F#=x wins over 2 lenses with F#=x which in turn win over 1 lens with F#=.5x. But how about 2 lenses with F#=2x? Wouldn’t they win over a single lens?

The pre-collimator needs to be large enough to cover the entire LED and have the lowest possible focal length. This way it collects the most light. The main lens need to have a short enough focal length in relation to its diameter to collect all of this light (so a low F-number). You could calculate that or just try out different lenses.

For laser, if the color of the light were not a primary issue, wouldn’t a Galilean type lens setup work to expand the beam? I think Wicked Lasers made an attachment for their Arctic.

That’s for expanding laser beams, not for expanding the lambertian white light coming from the phosphor.
You don’t want to expand the laser, you want to focus it to a point on the phosphor.

I think he’s saying if you don’t care if it’s white light you could just use an expanded laser beam which would have very high intensity.

Oh well yeah, but this is a flashlight we’re talking about here.
Of course you can expand a laser beam to get even more throw.
There are plenty of people that have done that on the internet.

The point I was trying to get at was, if the primary intent is to paint a target, a blue laser diode already has a beam distance of some 6.2 miles without a beam expander. My thought was to just use optics to decrease the rectangular shape (using cylindrical lenses) then widen the beam with further optics. Which would be far easier, and have a lot less losses, than exciting some phosphor. It just won’t be white.

I had always wanted a pocket light that could throw a long distance, just because…. And have some ideas of my own how to do it. But when I get to try these out is a while out as I have other projects.