Interesting. 
…but the LED needs to be 140mm away from the lens? Looks like the PVC piping might block some of the light if the LED is moved that far away?
9 amps, 3 miles, 4D Maglite, 140mm. You have my attention.
subscribed! this is going to be one epic build
Definitely interested in seeing this one come together! Looks epic! 8)
I had similar thoughts as Blinky1 about the narrow neck of the adapter possibly blocking some of the emission angle of the LED at such a long focal length?
Oh and you’re sure you don’t want to splurge on an SBT-70 for this build? Seems like the ideal LED for such a monster lens, nice round projected die! :bigsmile:
No heat. No AC either, so it’s either cold or hot.
That black head is a 5 mega and there’s a LED ZEP heat sink in it. It was 4xP7 but it will be 4 of the XHP70, maybe someday, when the mcpcbs and some 5000k or 5700k leds come out. It’s a build for a customer, just like this one is.
190mm focal length. I don’t know how it will come out. That’s part of the fun. I am going to try to incorporate a Wavien collar and see how that works. There may very well be an issue with the 2" diameter going to 4", but time will tell. What I might end up doing is to extend the 4" pipe, so that the 2" end just sits over the Maglite head, so the led would basically be into the 4" diameter to begin with. I don’t know how it’s going to go yet.
It was a thought, but I just want to see how much I can do with an SST-90. I just like those leds for some reason.
Better test run a scrap PVC pipe in the oven before you melt or disform (don’t think that’s a word) all your hard work
I know what you mean, I’m still tempted to build something around an sst-90 myself. It’s probably that juicy looking massive die!
Awesome, looking forward to the build.
Just wondering if the 3 li-ions in parallel would give 9A to the emitter. That might not be enough because with my SST-90, I had to supply 5.00V to drive it at 11A, so I’m assuming it’ll take more than 4.2V to push it to 9A, as well as losses in the wires and the linear driver.
I don't know. Guess I will have to test it out. The last one I did was with NiMH AA, but that would have been 4.8volt. It might not be enough. I might have to think about NiMH again. 4S/3P. It would be a complicated holder at best. Never had to get to 5 volt on the last one though. If I remember it was more than 4.2 though. Probably NiMH batteries will be the thing to go with.
Or possibly 4 of the 9.5 amp D cell NiMHs.
Look forward to it.That's really awesome. However,listening is a little hard for me.
OL,did you upload the "Closed Caption"? or it's auto generated by Youtube? (I noticed there are some words mistakes)
Auto generated by youtube most likely. I didn’t do it. It was uploaded in english, so youtube must take it over.
A few more photos in the OP, of testing the SST-90 and PVC head.
Looking cool, that’s already a nicely projected die, even with all the spill that the white tube must produce!
Looks like you’re well on your way with this approach but I just had this thought.
To save yourself the trouble of painting up the plumbing pipe, finishing it all nicely etc. Have you considered looking for cheap camera lens hoods on ebay to do the job of a lens host/shell instead. They tend to be pretty cheap, nicely anodized matte black aluminium and available in all sorts of sizes and step-up step-down configurations. I’ve been looking at what’s available out there and with a bit of luck and searching for compatible bits they could give a nice looking finish on the outside for minimum hassle/cost. Of course you’d have to find something that would work with this gigantic lens. This is the closest I could find that could fit in a quick search.
105mm lens hood
That’s 105mm at the filter thread at the back and about 115 at the front, should fit the lens nicely. It’s also 80mm long so you’re already half way to your focal length goal. Find another hood with a front filter size of 105mm to mate to this one and you’ll have yourself a suitably long and purdy looking host?
The nice thing about these is they all use standard filter size threads on the front and back, so you can lego them together rather nicely and use filter adapters to get down close to the OD of your maglight. I think you can basically build an entire flashlight host that way. This build and my desire for a dedicated large lens aspheric have really gotten the mental gears turning a bit on this, I could see it working quite well.
Anyway, just a thought, I’m sure you’ve got this all covered already and I’ll be keeping a close eye on how you get on with that lens and the lovely SST-90 that’s for sure
Cheers
Very cool. The faint spill could be very helpful in the wild. Enough light to move around without bumping into stuff, but not enough to ruin night vision. Watching with interest.
@LinusHoffman - Yes, I have thought about hoods, but with the fact that I need almost 175mm total distance, it's hard to use a hood. Two or three, but not just one. I have used hoods before, the last SST-90 build was with a hood. Thanks for the thoughts though. They do work well for builds.