Prototype off-road/boating spotlight - King COB!

Half the fun for me is drawing some of the parts. But in the case of the L6, I knew that a drawing of the head would be needed since I don’t have x-ray vision to see what the wall thicknesses are and where there is room inside the head.

I lost the contact name at TaskLED but they were pretty helpful with whatever questions I had. Not sure either about the e-switch other than to change modes?

The HBflex peaks at 3 amp output and the voltage can go to 45v. The cmt 2850 at 3amp was 35.8v about 107.4 watts it got hot quick but i didnt get a chance to test it before it fried itself. I have another 3 hbflex on order but i will work out the bugs and test before i ramp to full. I think the heatsink is most important thing and thinking a copper core is the go. Even on low it is a good work/flood light
I think the ideal combination is the hyperboost 80v 3.2 amp max with cmt2870 54v 2.8 amp this combination will give that bit extra above max current. But i havent really looked at the cma 72v

Possibly because you had the driver and COB mounted on the same piece of metal? I do plan installing one of these COBs in a flashlight host but haven’t decided yet on which one. I agree that heat sinking is paramount as well. I run all my tests on active heatsinking - even then the 3090 heats it up relatively fast. So any plans for using a smaller host for me will involve active cooling of some sort. I may just mill a head out of a solid billet but still looking for a faster, simpler retrofit solution (maybe someone has an MS12 with busted LEDs they want to dispose of…)

I don’t think copper is required as long as the aluminum is THICK. The base of that massive pin sink I have on my testing rig is at least 3/8” thick. It might even be 1/2”. Thermal modeling also confirms that for something passively cooled, the plate needs to be pretty thick to not “bottle neck” the heat. I want to use copper in my L6 but I have a LOT of aluminum at my disposal.

I would think though that would only be for a short time - you’d still need quite a bit of surface area to dissipate all that heat - i.e. fins?

Oh, of course you need surface area to actually get rid of the heat. I actually have an idea for solving that problem that I may use on the Lumen Bazooka. At some point, I need to machine some parts and do some testing. One key to passive cooling is fairly widely spaced pins/fins to minimize the resistance to airflow. On flashlights, I think these are usually designed and machined much thicker than optimal simply for durability reasons. If you look at Alpha Novatech passive heatsinks, they always have some crazy thin fins. On the order of 0.7mm to 1mm thick.

I would agree… case in point your pinned heatsink. I was thinking of making something along those lines. Would like to do passive but I think it would require something rather large to keep heat at bay. I have a couple candidates for modding but only testing will tell if they’ll work.

The led and driver were not mounted back to backon the same heatsink, first one i dont think it was secured to the heatsink properly. The second one i think fried because the led shelf was too thin and there was nothing stopping the heat from the led hitting the driver. Sort of like putting a blowtorch or heat gun on it.
If you look at the L6 the led actually sits on a 60mm x 5mm disk that is cut from the billet. I was thinking of putting the led on a copper core with aluminium fins stacked on it then the drive housing screws on the end to secure the stack.
I have the materials to build it because when i get an idea i collect the materials then work out how to do it. I wish i could use cad it would save me a lot of time with dimensions and clearances.

When I was first playing with the CXB3590, at just ~70w, it was causing my ghetto wood COB-Clamp to smoke. I can only imagine what a Vero29 at ~170w would do.

Tonight I’m slightly annoyed that I have all these Angela series reflectors that I’ll likely never use as it seems the Lena series is just superior.

Either way, I’m getting ready to take the CXB3590 out for a walk using the testing rig with the Lenina-S attached. I modified the mount a bit more with a knife and it actually seems to sit down almost properly now. I really should drill and tap some mounting holes but silly me left all my M3 taps at work. Oh, and I wrapped the diffuser lens with some black electrical tape to block the light piping.

I don’t think the diffuser lens is needed with that reflector when used with a massive LES. It’s not surprising that it doesn’t throw like the Angela-S given the difference in size but it instead makes a pretty darn big hot spot with lots of spill. It appears that there is a ring around the edge of the hot spot that is brighter than the center but it is pretty subtle. I think this is going to be an excellent combo for the Super L6.

Nice can’t wait to see it… Have a little business trip so won’t have time to do much physical work but I’ll have my laptop with me to mess around with CAD…

The 36V version stayed in a pretty good range heat-wise, I think pretty manageable with some form of active cooling. The 68V version however, makes more light and more heat, and the fan on the 900W boost converter work a lot harder (also I’m stepping up from 22.2-25.2V).

I think though with the TaskLED drivers running it at such high power requires some “extra” heat-sinking - i.e. having the entire back of the driver interfaced to a heatsink, and I think possibly with non-conductive thermal adhesive. I’m working to incorporate such into my design that it stays at a relatively cool temp, being I hope to push it past the 130W that it has been tested at.

Oh it wasn’t the thermals making the wood smoke. It was the intense light giving the wood a tan!

I had accidentally flashed my eyes a couple times when my sunglasses fell off as I was bench testing. Not fun. Coupling the adapter/mounting plate I made to the stock housing with thermal paste really helps with keeping temps under control.

Getting some more 18650s so I can my battery pack…

Been a little busy with some totally unrelated projects, hope to be back on this later this weekend.

Sorry if this was already posted. I’m not really into auto lights so haven’t followed this thread. Someone recently sent me a link to this video I thought it might be of interest to you guys.

Thanks for that… Yeah, I actually have a few of his LED drivers. They work to varying degrees depending on the COB used. I think I may know why but working around it I’m not sure. I have other options (TaskLED) and also other uses for the drives, but I did not want to use those square COBs he sells, as I have better ones.

I’ve been busy with everything but lights until lately.

I’ve refined the design for the battle lantern a bit and I’m getting close to ordering the material and tackling the CAM.

I’ve also reverse engineered the MeanWell LDH driver a bit. Turns out it is based on a RichTek RT8480. I’m still going through the design but it appears that MeanWell seriously derated it and it should be able to handle more than the 45w output. One easy change was a tweak to a calibration pot to increase the drive current from 1.05A to 1.3A so my LED would go from just 34w to 45w with this driver.