I took a little time to get a start on this project this afternoon. I am starting this with some copper parts the light will be built around. I have most of the parts for what I have planned. A couple of things are somewhere between China and here, so this is a small leap of faith.
The images in this thread will all be clickable to open a larger version.
Uppermost is a piece of 1/2” x 1/2” 22 gauge copper angle that I purchased as scrap from a surplus store a year or so ago because it looked like something I could use someday. The lower left is a short strip of 18 gauge copper, 3/4” wide. Lastly is a copper heatsink, 20mm x 70mm x 4mm thick, that is sold as a cooler for an M.2 SSD. These shall be silver soldered together to form a right-angle shape.
Here they are with flux paste applied.
Clamped together before soldering.
Still clamped and cooling after soldering with the butane torch.
Here’s the assembly. The visible side has been sanded smooth. There was some solder drip to clear away.
The other side where the extra length of the angle is visible. That was filed and sanded down.
Pretty much square as I wanted it.
My plan includes the use of a quad Optisolis (4000K, CRI of Ra=98 and R9=93). A Carclo 10623 quad optic will be used. That is a frosted medium spot optic.
The copper heat sink is 20mm wide. The copper strip soldered to the angle is US sized at 3/4” wide which is about 1mm smaller than the heatsink. That is visible in the 8th image above, if one looks carefully. (sorry, that corner is slightly out of focus.)
The heatsink sets the width at 20mm. The mcpcb is 20mm across the flats.
The optic is 24mm in diameter. (measures at 23.92mm). The 20mm heatsink is an actual 19.89. So I will need to file or sand two parallel flats on the areas of the optic that exceed the width of the heatsink. That will be close to the edges of the actual lens portion of the optic. Hopefully that operation will go well and not harm the beam.
I will be using a 17mm Lexel driver, purchased a few years ago. This one has no FET; just 4 - 7135 regulators, three of them are 380 mA for a total current of 1.87 amps. That will provide up to 467 mA per led. For this light that should be plenty. The body will be wood; don’t want to set it on fire! The solder blobs are temporary remnants from testing. The blue wires are for the e-switch. I plan to reflash the firmware to Anduril 2. Preesntly it still has NarsilM. That is how long I have had this driver.
I need a mount for the driver. I am making one from copper tubing. I have a small collection of mm sized copper tubes. I am using a short piece of 20mm OD x 1mm wall with a shorter piece of 18mm x 1mm wall tube slipped inside the larger one.
That is all for today.