Thats the issue with a large light bar. By the time you get the custom parts and the labor of making one off lights the price is gonna be sky high. Most people aint gonna want to spend it.
Another issue is aiming for middel of the road stats or price point. The cheep guys will say you are price gouging and there lights aRe Gude’Nuff. The high end guys will just trash your product for being over priced imported crap made at the same factory and just charging more.
It is a no win situation for the manufactures. Even I would like a few light bars, I just don’t like the mounting options for my daily commuter rig.
If price will surely be an issue in a 20” light bar (with C8 reflectors/XHP50.2), I suggest just a shorter one that can house let’s say 4 reflectors per modular, EXPANDABLE housing, as nowadays a single C8 is already quite impressive compared to a pair of car OEM headlights.
I understand that to actually sell a light bar it would have to have at least the appearance of having a ton of emitters even if they weren't needed . What about a mixture of high power and interlaced with B.S. cheaper annoying colored emitters and a supersonic stupid mode which dazzled and hypnotized the less led literate .Maybe a moon mode of High Cri 5MM leds for map reading :p
This guy had what looked to be a great light bar going, but just fell off the map a year ago. Maybe got beamed up by aliens, who knows.
I’m keen. Need to measure if 20” would fit on a ‘standard’ nudge bar as well as a full on bull bar to keep the market open. I will do some measurements and come back.
I guess as a first attempt a 12” bar would work fine.
But looking on banggood, they seem to offer a selection all under $140
Now don’t get me wrong. I know that those ones are likely dreadful.
But we all know that a good tint LED doesn’t really cost anything more than poor tint ones.
Just as we have with flashlights (Kronos X6, BLF A6, etc). I’m sure an existing housing could simply be utilised with different emitters and electronics. I was thinking for a 20” bar to be in the $120-300 price range depending on exact size.
I know this is all fantasy. But I can see it being feasible. And should places like Banggood want to stock and sell such an item (maybe with involvement from someone like Lumintop/Manker etc). Then I see such an item being potentially a good seller too.
I thought about this a few times. If I were to make it, it would be just to do it. There isn’t a way to make them cost effectively for the non-bulk manufacturer. Materials just cost too much.
You got me interested again though. I haven’t made a light in a while. I might put this on my TO DO List.
I have been thinking about an offroad lighting setup that uses fewer, higher intensity leds, and bigger reflectors, mainly to keep costs down but also to keep blinding stray light (spill) to a minimum.
My thoughts keep going to the SBT90.2 in about 2.5” reflectors… im guessing youd get around 400kcd, which would be pretty awesome. I wouldnt know how to power it in a 12 volt system tho.
Does anybody make a 25ish amp buck driver for 12-14 volts?
It would be much easier to just hook (probably 4) them up in series and direct drive. The drawback is that the light bar would have a multiple of 4 LEDs on it. Not really a big deal.
A bigger deal is the current draw. 18 amps x 4 is a lot for small alternators.
I like the idea of a BLF light bar. I don’t know a lot about the market though. I wonder if making a “light bar host” would be a viable option. Develop it so that people can finish it with standard light parts, e.g. c8 reflectors, carclo triple set ups, 20mm mcpcbs, etc. People can select their own optic/reflectors and led set up and then purchase those separately. That would help keep the price down. I think a really nice host with excellent heat sinking and maybe a few driver options would cover the parts that are hard to find or make. Not sure how feasible or desirable this is though.
Good idea.
Amp draw shouldnt be a problem- it would only be about 18 amps @ 12 volts. Even less @ 13.5.
A person would have to start with pretty small wire so as to not supply too many amps untill you figure out how many amps it will pull. Would suck to burn up 4 $35 emitters.
prbly would be easier to get a cheap one with a good heatsink, rip out crappy leds\drivers\optics, and build everything on that heatsink from scratch, but it wont be easy, it is nothing like building a flashlight, those things are exposed to elements, vibrations, temp fluctuations, much more than flashlights. there is a good reason why we almost never seen one,
I have already looked into trying to use an existing lighr bar quite a bit. The problem with the way they are made, is they have the led on the same board as the driver, and no room to have driver separate from the led board. So you’re forced to make something completely custom instead of using something cheap and off the shelf. Maybe I’ll build a prototype to try out a few ideas. Ive got the metal work down, but I’m not well versed in electronics.
I like the idea of using optics if possible, simply for the reason of not having the spill bouncing off of trees, fence posts, or the ground right in front of you and blinding you. But whatever i use, it has to have a wide beam but short from top to bottom. Most of the intensity needs to focus straight forward and gradually get less intense the further from the center you get.
That’s why TIR lenses are common among better lightbars.
Elliptical (“striped”) TIRs do exactly that.
Traditional reflectors are not a good idea if you are trying to reduce stray light. Larger TIR optics that are optimized to whatever type LED (eg 3535 vs 7070 vs COB) would be what you want.
Also consider a remote driver. This could solve a lot of packaging issues IMO, especially if its a multi-mode driver with in cab control. Only have LEDs and optics in the housing and plug into a regulated harness…
As for a B-as-in-budget ‘BLF lightbar’, I think the way it has to start is from people first modding what’s out there, developing drivers, figuring out optic/emitter combinations, etc. Then after two or three years maybe an open/crowd sourced design could be drafted and mass produced. If anyone designs something faster than that and of high quality, it ain’t gonna be cheap.
So, most of the shit light bars have a single thin as shit allu mpcb with all the circuitry and all the leds on it to save on mfg costs.
For this to get off the ground, we need
- a mfg willing to do this.
- a good starting point with the design, the simpler the better. if we can find a semi shit light bar, get a hold of the oem and say, “can we get x many of (base light bar) but with y exact changes” that makes things much easier and more likely to happen.
- ?
- proffit
this is basically what happened with the eagle eye x6 GB way back in the day.
Looking at the Vf of a lot of emitters, it appears a good portion like the Samsung 351D, all the XHPs and rainbow Cree’s, White flats, sst/sbt, and FC-40 could work near their sweet-spot direct drive. Old Cree and Nichia don’t match up so well. A simple 12V linear driver could work with very low losses and therefore be able to probably be in a potted die cast aluminum enclosure.
Ide be happy with one of these with 6 sst-20s in a good tint bin, with proper waterproofing.
If we want to get weird, 6x xhp50s with a constant current driver, and a turbo button
This is BLF, we are aiming for the cross over between cost and performance. there is no need to reinvent the wheel, and no reason to just try and take someone elses broken wheel put some bells and whistles on it, and try and sell it to someone else.
im fine with a shitty plastic reflector on a light bar, if its well sealed behind actual glass, and the leds have a nice tint, a good driver, and proper heat sinking to the body.
Isnt the idea to avoid extraneous retooling costs. and get something simple, effective, and enough of us to make an order large enough to make it actually happen in actuality?