1500W LED Flashlight, >100.000 Lumen, >1Mcd

Absolutely incredible!! Have you thought of building an even more powerful version with this bad boy?

“ CBAK Energy Technology, through its BAK Power division, announced that from 2023 it will also produce 25Ah/1kW peak power density 4680 cylindrical cells on a large scale”

Thanks for taking the time and effort to build your beast! I am super impressed with your advanced knowledge and skills.

Being able to see your work makes life exciting!

WHERE IS THE CLIP??? :laughing: :partying_face:

Good job! :+1:

Bleah, THOR mjolnir

Welcome to BLF Holzleim. :sunglasses:
Very complicated and expensive light you are building :open_mouth:

@Photon Master: interesting cells, good amount of energy per volume. But already now the battery pack delivers enough power to very quickly heat up both the lamp head (>1 kW being dissipated here on ALL_FULL button), and also the DC/DC converter (LED driver) section. Although efficiency being at ~93%, that still means ~100W peak power being dissipated on the driver PCB.

I checked that my chosen principle of conducting the heat originating from the MOSFET, the power-diode (boost converter) and the Induktors to the backside of the PCB, and then to the aluminium of the lamp body. Put a dense array of vias underneath the components, being filled with tin this conducts pretty good (PCB is only 0.8mm thick). Not suited for automated assembly, but for manual work good.

Originally I hab planned to go for 4x LiPo in parallel with 4x 40T, but for safety and reliability reason I then changed to save cells only. The LiPo initially chosen would have offered endless power: 357A continues, 714A short term current, meaning ~ 5000W continues power

https://www.stefansliposhop.de/akkus/sls-speed/sls-speed-limited-edition-5100mah-4s-14-8v-70-140c::1927.html

But I made some bad experience using LiPo, lost a big lamp ~10 years ago due to LiPo cell fault:

https://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?221261-Handheld-500W-LED-Power-finally-finished-(Beamshots-added)

@vit55: "Bleah, THOR mjolnir"....what does that mean? Interesting that you mention Mjölnir, that is exactly the name I chose for my device. Will engrave that later into the metal on several locations. I thought of this name because especially the tactical flash-combat mode is very impressive: Use currently around 1800W total power for flashing (2000W would be possible, can be unleashed later per SW update), not measure yet, but should be >120.000 Lumen during flashes. So the name "Mjölnir" came into my mind....

Will do some beamshots and/or video clip one weather conditions here are better, currently we have continues rain....

@Th558: Thanks for asking this, did some measurements: You were right, the sweet spot for short term (some seconds) seems to be at ~34A; Changes SW now to begin at 34A, then drop down to ~30A over some seconds. I just implemented the 38A hardware-wise, to have enough headroom to max out the sweet spot per SW.

@CNCman: Thanks for the welcome words. Yes, several 100€ accumulated for material, beginning with the SBT90.2 being rather expensive. But that is ok, I will not build such a big one every year....took me already many hours of development and building time...

Super impressive !

Wow I want one so bad… (: wish I had your knowledge and could build something like this myself. The heat issue makes perfect sense…

Awesome! Extremely skillful and well executed build. :person_with_crown: :+1:

I like the way you mounted those XHP70.2 without a PCB.

You should really join the 9th BLF Old Lumens contest this year.

What a great build :+1:

What I think is that
The SBT in the middle is useful
the four others in the 30mm reflectors are not so a good choice,
cause of many heat.many amps.less throw cause of diameter and so on.
Maybe I am wrong. :innocent:

But good skills and well done,thanks for sharing

regards Xandre

Thanks for the nice words

Maybe some words regarding usefulness:

When I began this project I set me as design targets:

  • I want to build a LED light with > 1000W power, but still being in somewhat "normal" (big)flashlight factor
  • I want to build a useful light, not only aiming at the "wow" factor when using it the first times

Form my previous builds I knew how useful a pure floodlight component is, especially when walking of running in the woods. You can move around the lamp a bit without loosing good sight on the items just in front of you.

My smaller builds had pure flood LEDs without any optics, and then a single spot, being as tight as possible for the chosen lamp size.

Using this combination, I was already very satisfied with flexibility I could achieve.

But I sometime missed something between the tight spot and the pure flood, to light up the path 10-20m in fron of you.

Now, looking at the spot: I made some experiments and fun builds aiming at very tight and intense spots. But although being very impressive and fun to play around with (light sword...), it is not really useful to light up only such a small spot at a far target.

For many of the "light sword" lights you must use binoculars in parallel with the light to make use of it. This becomes even more critical when moving (running or walking), because then the tight light ray bounces a lot and it is even harder to see something in the distance.

With this background I decided that for my big lamp I want the following:

  • Lamp head should not be bigger that ~10x10cm (actually it is 10.4 X 11.4 cm)
  • Array of big LEDs without optics for pure flood -> 8x XP70.2
  • Something between flood and spot, for 10-20m range -> 8x XHP50.2 in 20mm reflectors
  • Spot in the range 4....8 degree FWHM, fitting in the head, and leaving space for the mid-range elements
    • 1x SBT90.2 in 62mm TIR (LLC56N) giving ~6° FWHM and ~600kCd
    • best space usage made me add 4x SBT90.2 in 30mm TIR (LLC05N7) with ~12° FWHM and additional 500kCd; very nice to light up not only a small spot in the distance, but instead significant area

This setup resulted for me in very good flexibility, offering useful, tight spot, and impressive amount of flood and mid-range lighting.

But at this point, let me put this question here in the community:

Do some of you really have use-cases for the super-long throwers, as they are also being offered these day a commercial products like for example Astrolux MF05 or similar?

I agree, as said above, very fun to play around with, but for real world usage not that often matching an opportunity.

 

As I just wrote about potential of battery:

This happens when one capacitor accidentally got mechanically damaged, then failing after some days:

Nearly finished repairing this, but the effect would have been significant worse if I had the 700A peak capable LiPo had in the design.....

Ok, lamp is back to full operation....

Took some very quick beam shots:

Our garden, Skilhunt M200, 1200Lumen, 9.000cd:

Mjölnir, tight and wide spot, ~600W, 30.000Lumen, 1Mcd:

Mjölnir, all-full, ~1300W, 100.000Lumen, 1,xMcd:

View behind house across field, tree at 50m, Skilhunt M200:

Mjölnir, tight and wide spot, ~600W, 30.000Lumen, 1Mcd:

Mjölnir, all-full, ~1300W, 100.000Lumen, 1,xMcd:

View behind house across field, small building at 160m (no yet visible here), Skilhunt M200:

Mjölnir, tight spot, ~130W, 6.000Lumen, 560kcd:

Mjölnir, all-full, ~1300W, 100.000Lumen, 1,xMcd:

My eyes!

Great work there though.

The final enlightenment… :sunglasses: Just microseconds before evaporating into oblivion.

Very nice build and especially very compact for such a powerful light!

It should be noted though that there is already a custom flashlight called "Mjölnir" made by the German modder Vinz. He made a small batch of these.

Thanks for pointing out there was already one "Mjölnir" lamp.

But I think I stay with the name, because it matches pretty good:

It looks a bit like an hammer looking from the side, and further, the tactical flashing mode is quite impressive: currently ~1650W total power during the flashes, could be increased per software even close to 2000W , and the weight of 3kg reminds to holding a hammer....

And yes, although not being an ECD, I also consider it rather compact compared to the power. Sometimes I still can't believe I'm really unleashing >1500W by only a hitting a small button...

This light is significantly more hammer-shaped though hahahah

I agree, the name fits this light better

It’s a nice beast of a light for sure, good on you for having the skills to make it. For me I wouldn’t bother as I can get a 100,000lm flashlight off a Chinese seller on eBay for $11.99, it also has the latest hi powa XHP.160 led. Yeah so it’s much smaller too, has a zoom function, waterproof to 300m and don’t need all them heavy batteries it just needs single AA. The seller even showed me a picture of it lighting up a football feild. :person_facepalming: