Imalent MS18 with 100,000Lumen and R90TS with 36,000Lumen

LED Flashlights – General Info Other Battery Type Flashlights
43

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?

44

I went looking for a video on Artic Spyder. Came across some comments about using it for pest control.

Really? Blinding animals is a good use for a powerful laser?

Rest my case.

45

That’s were I was heading with the BLF Sabre. Move the head off the battery tube and cool it with a fan.

I have another design that has an even better and more radical solution for cooling and it WILL work, but it remains in……my imagination.

46

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?

47

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.

48

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?

49

Your theory is plausible or not? One side air intake, and the other exhaust?

50

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.

51

Maybe you can take a drill to your MS18 when you get one to add extra cooling vents.

For science of course. :stuck_out_tongue:

52

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. :smiley:

53

That’s probably how aliens feel about us too.

54

I can just imagine aliens looking at us like lab rats! To them we would have to be considered a very dumb and violent species.

55

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.

56

See, the thing is, Imalent doesn’t seem to put much R&D in their light designs.

I mean, if they really wanted to sustain very high lumen levels in such a large head, rather than making a bit heatsink with a lot of thermal mass, they should make a CPU type heatsink with tons of fins.

The light itself would get above ambient more quickly, but dissapate a large amount of heat, and under active cooling, could probably sustain 32000 lumens continuous output, or even 50000 lumens with a powerful fan.

57

I doubt that these companies pay as much attention to solving an obvious problem as they do to make it cheaper and sell more….more….more.

Let’s throw out 30,000 lumens for x seconds and ….look at me. 199.95 please.

Would you be surprised that I spent 10% of sales on machinery and RD? Most of the production machinery was in house…or repurposed technology.

90% were duds, 10% made a lot of money. And that is in an industry crippled by Chinese labor.

58

I mean, I can easily differentiate lights that are very wall made and have quite a bit of R&D behind them.

The BLF Q8 has outstanding heatsinking for its size.

The MT07S has excellent heatsink and a very well made driver. It is super efficient on the 500 lumen mode.

The GT is an absolute beast.

Etc.

The problem is that R&D takes time. A lot of it. Which is why it’s expensive, and why BLF lights take such a long time to make.

Even simple changes are hard to do, especially with Chinese companies not usually willing to take many risks and innovate.

Two examples I’ve encountered:

1. LEDs not easily available to order in China. The LH351Ds are not easily available to order in China. So, lights that use them, and manufacturers try to steer away from them.
So, they have to order them outside of China, where prices are higher, you have to pay customs and taxes, and have no preferential treatment.

2. Springs. With my experience in conductive springs built up, I’ve actually had some companies consult me about ideas for higher conductivity springs****

Well, recently, I’ve had a company ask what they could do to improve their springs for more power. I’ve told them to use:

- Double springs. No problem.

- Gold/silver plated springs. No problem.

  • Phosphor bronze. No problem.

The issue comes when I try to use more advanced materials/techniques.

- Triple layer electroplating. Nickel-copper-silver. Less expensive than gold, but quite a bit higher performance. No dice. Says “takes too much time, complicated and not many companies do this”. But I know 2 that do. Nothing still.

  • BeCu C17530 wire. They ask, why not BeCu C17500? Because it has way worse mechanical properties, and the offset in conductivity can be overcame with triple layer separate plating.
    No dice.
59

Judging from their past efforts (and VoB’s teardown) I think not at all. They look like they got some CAD whiz making cool looking shapes that many folks will oooh and aaah over. It’s laughable, because the active cooling for a 100W COB is about three times the size of what’s in the Imalent, only the Imalent has a crappier fan. They could have just made the finned heatsink and head one solid casting, then extended all the fins out to the exterior. It still wouldn’t be enough, but it would be a lot better than what they have now.

60

I hope Imalent listen and design a better active cooling.
And let user charge the battery easily without taking the light apart.

61

You don’t need hundreds of CFM because the body has surface area too. Manufacturers could easily make an extrusion with internal fins, exponentially increasing surface area. They could also add through holes to allow heat pipes from the head. There’s no rules stating that one must hold a flashlight from its body; a separate, ergonomic handle would be great - you can make it adjustable, and you can hook the handle onto your belt or backpack strap. And with the ginormous head this thing has, an external handle could have a more forward design, which would make the light balance better on the hand, instead of being head-heavy. You can have the handle mount to a t-slot in the extrusion, which would make it adjustable, and able to mount the light to whatever you want. And thus, you don’t have to think of the body as having to be round.

62

CPU heatsink you say?


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