100Mcd LEP - Laser Phosphor Wheel

I am so very Happy for you likevvii to be in position to build a dream and have the will and perseverance to succeed.
There are many intelligent members here at BLF that will enjoy this project !
Thank You for sharing. :smiley:

From memory:
There are 2 or more collar patents. One is for RGB (W?) LEDs and maybe that’s what you mention when you say about 4 LEDs?
There is a much more generic patent and it’s not easy to work around it.

I’m sure if you get one custom made then it’s not a problem since the manufacturer isn’t selling it as a collar or flashlight, they just make custom optics.
Also it’s china, so……
:stuck_out_tongue:

It rotates so the laser isn’t on one spot very long.
Essentially it makes it so the laser is like 100x less intense per area (depending on diameter), since a ring has a lot more area than a spot.
The down side is that it’s hard to cool well since it’s moving and not fixed, so small fins and high airflow is important.

1 Thank

Wow, impressive....

Did not think such can be done without special lab equipment.

What about savety here: How dangerous are these Laser regarding damage to your eyes?

I'm used to build my own stuff from scratch, but this is somewhat new to me....

Keep going, looking forward to let it burn the sky..

Well, they instantly blind you if they go in your eyes or reflect off of something into your eyes.
When turning them on it’s important to use laser safety glasses that block the blue wavelength, those can save you if you accidentally point the laser at the wrong place.
Once they’re mounted and shielded inside the light it’s pretty safe.

The RPM of the wheel should be around 5000~9000RPM. It was factory balanced to around 6000RPM I think. It still vibrates a tiny bit.
The efficiency of ceramic phosphor is around 450lm/(Watts of literal BLUE laser)
But we need to convert the electricity into blue light. With an efficiency of about around 30~35% and also power required for the laser driver, Lasers need to stay below 65C so usually they require active cooling which adds to the overall system power. At the end would be maybe around 150lm/(Watts of electrical energy).

That is a pretty good idea! I worked with liquid dispensing pumps before and it wouldn’t be too much trouble.
I used to fix phones as a business and realized that IPA even the 99.9% ones leave a very thin film of residue.
This might be an option for static phosphors instead of using TECs because they consume 2.5x the power to cool 1x of the power.

Wow! I apologize and may have missed it. Do you have a link to the second patent? I had gone over the first one (4LEDs) with a patent lawyer and was told it was not very effective if someone just wanted to sell bowl shaped mirrors.

Yeah, there will be videos and I can show the zooming function.
I used the top of the line consumer components for the sake of project success. But the economic version of this build will be cheaper than most people think
Wayyy less than a W50.
It was pretty fun to build. I barely needed to drill or cut anything. Now that I have did the fitment in person, I modified the 3D files and there is no cutting required at all for the entire build.

I personally believe lasers are not dangerous if you take it slowly and have a clear understanding of all your equipment. A laser is no more dangerous than an arc welder. Just need the right equipment. It really helps when only a maximum of 1 person is involved in the project. Safety accidents with lasers is mostly because of communication errors.
I do appreciate the fact that people online make big deal out of lasers and say it will insta blind you by being near it without goggles. These people are literally saving lives with white lies.
It all has to do with power entering and focusing into your retina.
Your recent project was super awesome! I had always wanted to solder emitters directly to a copper block. I also wanted to try soldering emitters to a copper heatpipe too haha.

Likely more than ever will be manufactured. Laser Ranging to Retro-Reflectors on the Moon as a Test of Theories of Gravity | SpringerLink

Astronauts have left several retroreflector arrays on the moon and it takes very high wattage lasers to produce a reflection barely even detectable by telescopes. To have enough light to reflect off the diffuse surface and be visible would require a loooot of candela.

I think this is the more problematic patent (but Wavien holds quite a few more):

I would think an ‘80%’ collar is untouchable. Hemispherical al reflector with a blind pilot hole for diy aperture drilling. Can’t cost more than any other flashlight reflector either. I know a cold mirror glass is ideal, but in that case, put the money down for a genuine article

While a cold mirror like the original Wavien collar keeps the temps lower by not reflecting infrared light, It still lets quite a bit of visible light through.
I’m curious how the intensity would compare if the reflector is solid electroformed instead…
More heat for sure, but maybe more output?

But yeah, a pinhole in a hemisphere would give the maximum output, just not a lot of lumens haha

This answers your question in cool way :slight_smile:

Impressive project, really nice to find something that extraordinary on flashlight forum :+1:

Cant wait to see the beamshots, good luck with the project!

IIRC, collar reflects blue only because that’s what excites the phosphor, at least in the LEDs that they used. They could design a cold mirror that would reflect all visible light just as well.
It would:

  • produce higher temperatures, reducing intensity
  • reflect some light off the silicone on top of the LED, increasing intensity

And substrate on which you put reflective coating doesn’t matter all that much. You can have a dichroic mirror (like the Wavien one) on metal as well. Or you can have alu mirror on glass.

Are you sure about this? I suppose that assumes the coating is absorbing the other wavelengths. If it was doing that, then there shouldn’t be any visible light escaping from the outside of a waiven right? I thought they acted more or less transparent to the non reflected wavelengths. If this is the case, substrate matters.

If you put the coating on a metal then the IR and red wavelengths will all be reflected back because they can’t go through metal…
That’s why all cold mirrors are on glass, so that the hot light can escape.

But yes, you can put aluminum on glass, that’s what edmund optics does with their parabolics.

You’re right, alu substrate reflects IR and so it’s worse than glass in that regard. I guess it would be possible to add some black layer that blocks it between the alu and the mirror. But I don’t know whether such process customization would be economically reasonable.

BTW, does it matter a lot? Quick check:
http://www.firecalculators.com/radiantheatsimple
1 mm² surface with emissivity of 0.82 (taken from here) heated to 150 °C radiates ~1.5W of energy. Alu has very high reflectivity in IR, let’s omit that.
Is that 1.5W a lot? More than my gut feeling would give. :wink: May have a measurable effect.

It’s like 5-10% if the LED is being driven at ~6A, so probably will just make the output peak a bit sooner.
But maybe the amount of visible light reflected would compensate for that, how much I don’t know.
Some day I’ll buy an electroformed collar and see how it compares to my glass ones.

I did not take into account that some of the radiant heat escapes through the aperture. Also, some is reflected by the die, giving it another chance to escape. If collar collects 75% of energy (pretty much the worst case) it ends up at just over 1W.

My gut feeling is that any mirror will work. The heat emitted is not significant.
In addition, I also believe a larger portion of the efficiency of a collar is not from the recycled blue but simply the white light.

LEP that use reflective laser has a much higher spike of blue since there isn’t really anything stopping the laser to refract/reflect off the surface, where as an LED or transmissive phosphor all of the blue light must pass. Any yet, I keep getting the same ~2x intensity when using the Waiven produced collars on LEDs, LEPs of all types phosphors.
When I was testing the solid crystal static phosphors with collar, they had a very bad absorption rate so there would be quite a bit of leftover blue; same results, about 2x intensity

I was thinking of trying to make my own collars and getting it sent in to be silver/Alu coated used in the Chinese plastic reflectors. Each batch costs like 150USD and can fit like 40 collars. They said the reflectivity is around 97%

I was never able to get a very smooth or spherical surface to continue with coating. Maybe we can do injection molded? The coating would fill up the small surface imperfections.

All I can say likevvii is WOW WOW WOW. :beer:

Thank you for the kinds words (:

I am currently working with an electronic engineer freelancer to produce the controller.
The controller will have a 50mm OLED, buzzer, and buttons

It will monitor and display every critical component sensors and provide warnings / automatic decision when certain values are reached.

Here are some features I plan to add:
(To control brightness, I have a 100mm slide potentiometer.)

-Software limited slow ramp up. Example: +20% per second. Ramping down is unaffected.
-Potentiometer state check. If output is 10% or higher when powered on or long idle; it will produce error message and tell operator to lower potentiometer to zero.
-Exponential brightness curve. A little bit more brightness resolution on the lower end.