At a distance…. yes. A thrower like a BLF GT is going to appear much brighter and possibly do much more damage than a floody light with less lux even though the floody light might have 100x the lumen output.
However, if you take your flashlight and shine it into your eyes from a 1 ft away… then the floody light will probably cause much greater injury.
Will the government need to regulate these lights? I don’t think so. There’s a big difference in danger to others between a floody flashlight and a laser. And many light sources such as professional stadium lights or theater projector lights can produce many more lumens than the DX80 and they aren’t regulated.
Now… time to get back to the topic at hand :sunglasses: : … the DX80!
A super-bright hobbyist light that pushes the envelope. It’s nice to see Imalent pushing the limits of what can be done with today’s tech even if this light is extremely impractical. If you need a floody light, something smaller will work just fine. And if you need something illuminated in the distance, then BLF GT or equivalent is a better choice.
Well it didn’t take long when Wicked Lasers made the Arctic Spyder that shipping got shut down in the US (thankfully I got one.) and that was just under 1W. It didn’t help that they called it a Light Saber (or Sabre for the Euro and Canada guys) or that they showed videos of it burning stuff or advertised it as the “most dangerous laser in the World!” And that wasn’t that long ago - 6-8 years? It doesn’t stop folks from making 10W lasers.
I think gasoline is more harmful to the eyes and can cause a bigger fire, but that doesn’t stop people from jamming the gas cap under the pump handle and rubbing their tushes on the car seat creating static electricity, or using their cell phones, or filling gas in milk jugs in their trunk, etc…
The reality is that for 99% of us, these are our toys. Of course, as Clark Kent’s father said, “With great power comes great responsibility” and yes we are our own self-defense. This doesn’t prevent some dumb YouTube rich kid to buy one of these and laze his eyes blind; I have no sympathy for these idiots, it’s Darwinism at work. But I think we’re safe - I doubt even .1% of Americans know who Imalent are anyway.
Same thing happened when I tested the Q8 at the side of the plant. The ground had a blanket of snow and it lit up the entire parking lot. 100,000 lumen would be so bright, I would have to aim it at tree top level to avoid the glare.
Let’s be honest, it’s a toy. So for those who can afford it, go at it.
So are these new lights using the same head as the old ones, just with a new 18 emitter reflector?
I believe the old lights used 8 x 20700 cells, but the new version uses 8 x 21700. I wonder if they redesigned the battery tube to be slightly larger in diameter?
If so, maybe they redesigned the head to be slightly larger to fit the new battery tube diameter?
They’re centrifugal Style fan cooling system can work in theory, they just need to have multiple are shields in place to direct the airflow properly. You basically want to have one side of the flashlights as an air Inlet in the other side as an outlet. I wonder if they have actually improved the airflow?
People use gasoline for pest control too. If anyone can abuse anything, they will. Because they can. Or we can live in a nanny state where we’re given rations - then we wouldn’t be allowed to own anything. John Lennon thought that was cool. I love the Beatles, but he was dead wrong. What percentage of the population owns an Arctic Spyder? And then what percentage uses it for pest control? There are always going to be idiots. Some idiot kid in the Midwest not too long ago took apart thousands of CO2 detectors. Why? To build a nuclear reactor in his parents’ backyard shed. His parents thought the welts on his face were from acne. Do we go and regulate CO2 detectors?
When you separate the head from the body, you eliminate the body as a potential aid in cooling. To me, if you made the body slightly wider in diameter, and put a fan at the tail cap, you have the entire surface area of the body, not just the head. You also wouldn’t have to worry about routing wires though a small outer pillar.
Comparing the MS12 to the MS18 it does look like a new head design. It actually has less cooling vents in it. Is that a good thing or bad thing? Maybe they redesigned the cooling to make it more efficient?
That is really hard to do if they are using the same fan setup as before. Centrifugal fans pull air into it’s center and blows it out the sides. Hopefully they went with a different fan design. Maybe a radial fan blowing left to right. I hope so.
I have zero interest in buying a MS18. It’s too expensive and I have no use for it. I’m just curious about the design of it. It’s like an alien, I want to dissect it and see how it works.
I thought about that and is a potential solution BUT you need to force too much air and consequently a larger diameter to hold on to.
You already have 2” body to accommodate 4 cells, now you need to get to 3” to have an adequate space to carry air. But, that is still not enough to carry hundreds of cfm. Now you need to get into to 4” plus diameter. The only other solution to high cfm is more pressure, not really a solution.
There is another way…and it’s nothing like anything ever made. Start thinking about much more surface area and how to achieve that. Throw away everything you know and just try to see how to get massive amount of surface area. Thus you can maximize the heat transfer from given low pressure cfm.
