YAY for aspherics!
Can you tell me more about how the pre-collimator lens work? So the first lens is an Aspherical, and the second is a planoconvex lens?
I have many aspherical lens, but many of them are bad quality. Where do you get yours?
Maybe you can go to a glasses store and get those lenses AR coated!
I will explain in detail how pre-collimator lens work, what it can do and not do, just gave me some time to prepare some diagrams and photos. Pre-collimator is an uf t20 lens and second lens an 100 mm diameter from fasttech.
I am in awe, that is an incredible build.
Gives the word, scratch build a whole new meaning…
You win greatest build of 2014 from where I sit.
Well done!
thank you very much for the nice words, but lets be fair here, Syri pure throw have almost double the time at disposition, the contest have been closed from a long time now and I still work and improve the light. So what you see here is different from what i was able to realize during the contest time.
first post updated, hope to have been able to share some light in likevvii questions.
What a great light! I love how it looked during the competition and now you have made it even better. Thank you for taking the time to make video and pictures and borrow cameras and all this. What a great build. TY :-D
I did not see this thread earlier.
This is factinating. So if you add some kind of wavien collar around that first precoolimator lenses you could gain 20 or more % of throw.
I dont recall seeing this thread either. Simply amazing, the whole show that is. A bit lost for words to be honest. All the best for the health. 
I would be happy with 500kcd(or a bit less) throw in 50mm aspherics. So If calculated right by your build precoolimator needs to be 2,631 times smaller than main lens?
What is degree of precoolimator lenses and distance in mm from emitter to that lens? and what is distance from precoolimator to main lens?
It could be done in smaller package and I pressume that 50mm main lenses in combination with right precoolimator will project even larger beam(lumen) than in your picture.
by my quick calculations with an 50 mm aspheric and everything else equal like in my setup u should have around ~320 kcd throw. by default u should benefit from a bigger spot also.
u don’t need to make precollimator smaller, i am pretty sure that even with my existing precollimator u could use an 50 mm lens. but to work well u should find one with a long focal length. in fact what you are asking is almost this (little bit smaller with less output)
in pure throw setup precollimator is very near the led maybe ~4mm. i don’t know exactly, have to take apart and find a way to measure.
one more photo of the light i made yesterday :
i have changed house lately and unfortunately now i am short of places to test throwers 
just have to put up in the sky
i have a 2bbl aspheric lens sitting in my drawer it will throw a pencil beam when done just waiting on a host to be made for it................nice job
Damn, that is a cool looking light and the output is awesome. Wish I could understand what I'm looking at. It lookslike most of the final lens is covered by something. What am I looking at? I'm so curious.
nitro it would be cool if u finish your project and post some beamshots. it could be even more cooler if we have some sort of place when we meet lets say annually and compare self made and unique throwers and super throwers from all over the world. of course this is just an wishful thinking bc i know practically it have zero chances to be realized in practice 
ImA4Wheelr tomorrow from work i can post more photos from diferent angles to get a more clear idea. its just the light that reflects on main lens. its funny but when u ask this i was playing with a small lens in front for more usability. but in the photo is just the 2 lens ordinary setup i use for play around.
Really incredible, and by the way, one of my best friends did Peace Corps in Albania and really loved it.
cabfrank thank you. my country is little bit unique in that regard, its very small but despite that, have a lot of sea with some very beautiful beach and in the same time some very rough mauntines with some interesting views and places.
ImA4Wheelr some more photos for you from different angles
for comparison i have put in one side ledlenser p7
and in the other side convoy M2
looking to the the led thru 2 lenses its not that easy job for the phone camera:
funny thing is when u ask what it has on top i was in the desk playing around with different setups.
I am from some times searching easy way to transform pure throw in one ordinary short search light. not that i need one but just for fun
and one interesting result is this from yesterday:
like this on my desk it project this spot in the ceiling :
when u ask i was just putting this lens on the top :
in the same position on the desk :
and the result on the ceiling :
like an ordinary flashlight with reflector
that’s why i like to play around with lenses. with the right ones and with imaginations you can do pretty much all you want 
now i can control how much spill i want in both ways in diameter(changing to other lens with the same diameter but different f ) or in intensity which mean how much of the entire output will go to spill (changing the diameter of the lens but with constant f ) or both of them (changing both diameter and f )
right now i am looking for a way to mimic corona we see with traditional reflectors
I tried 5 precollimator lenses so far but they degrade the throw... Distances from 2-8mm above de domed emitter I tried to ask some other guys about this precoolimator thing and non of them had success, and some of them are in this job since very beginning of led flashlight.
No matter what lenses they tried throw was degraded a lot or just bit less than without precollimator lenses.
So it seems that you got some special lenses in your build. Is here any secret like polishing or something?
I love your work. I've said it before and I'll say it again. You're a master craftsman when it comes to wire and sheet metals. That is an awesome creation.
Love the pics in Post 29. You got me thinking about playing with lenses now. I got a 100mm that really needs a home. It won't look like a luminarium iaculator custom, but I'm sure I'll learn a lot.
Thanks for sharing. Keep up the great work.
Including the 750,000 mini-bunkers built by Hoxha…
These guys are getting 173 mile throw from a red Luxeon and big honkin’ fresnel lens:
in fact being addicted by lens and flashlights i have an big collection of quality lenses, big part even coated, but in project i am using only 2 ordinary ones. one is ~100 mm lens from fasttech and the other is the main lens u get from an ordinary UFT20 used as precollimator.
i thought i have made this clear when answered to member likevvii how my setup work and why i chose it. theoretically an precollimator will NOT ad in throw it will ADD in total output from flashlight or lumen numbers in other world. that can be easily perceived by human eye as more throw but in fact it is not. in reality we have even slightly less throw because we are introducing more resistance to the light depending on the type of lens transmittance.
for example if one lens have 98% transmittance it means it block 2% of source. hence if we use this type we should have 2% less throw than without it.
and this in the best case scenario when everything else is being implemented properly! chose the wrong setup and you could end losing more throw and even less output in lumen.
I have said it on the video, have explained to likevvii and am saying here again.
than why i complicated my design u may ask. i just cut the loses that are usually present in an ordinary zoom light. u have to see with your eyes what type of beam my flashlight throw with and without precollimator to understand better. i also get an more precisely focused beam and more clear and regular . also its more small than using only one lens and tho more ergonomic in the hand (more balanced in weight )
maybe you are wondering from where do come my high numbers and that type of beam u see in photos? i will try to concentrate as much as possible this hoping it will be more clear:
ImA4Wheelr thanks for the good words. your work with an dedomed xml and big lens has been an inspiration for my project :bigsmile:
texaspyro WW2 is crazy stuff i think we con not imagine it but some have lived it unfortunately. CW even not that crazy still its another era compared to what we are living now. that i think explain why people have done bizarre things all over the world during that period. the fanny thing is, now those bunker are another reason to make my country even more attractive to tourists !
and pretty interesting reading on the project for communicating in long distances with light. but even that the project is spectacular IMHO your tittle is misleading. what we call throw is very very far from what is capturing an optical signal with amplifying optical tools.
also if u like this kind of stuff i suggest reading on optical implementations of moon distance from earth. u could find some bizarre numbers there
also i am not sure on this but i think there are some military communicating satellites with light. i often spend too much time reading and can not guaranty if this is in my mind or somewhere written on the net. i have no numbers but i think those systems could have some decent throwers too with some very big distances and numbers :bigsmile:
Somewhere (youtube?) there is a very good video about using the retro-reflectors placed on the moon by the Apollo astronauts to measure the earth-moon difference. Big laser into big telescope… you get a very few photons back… like one in 10^20 to 10^24. I once talked to a guy that built the time interval counters that they use.
Several military satellite constellations use laser links to talk between themselves… makes it harder to eavesdrop on the links.
Also apparently there are laser links to talk to submarines.