5D Mag - SST-90 - 95mm Aspheric - 9+amp build - Finished on 03/17/15 and beam shots are in Post #1

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! :slight_smile:

Awesome, looking forward to the build. :slight_smile:

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 :slight_smile:
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.

OL i have my large 4inch 2bbl aspheric build im working on and i considered using a stainless steel muffler might sound funny but will look sweet when done :)

what im using http://www.ebay.com/itm/130868231716?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

then im going to polish a mag tube to match the stainless

So, I haven't done much with this build, but today I did a test of 4 lenses. I ended up reordering the KD lens, because of defects and I went ahead and ordered some Edmund/Anchor Optics lenses. Condenser lenses. Grade 1 and grade 2. Here's the four lenses:

Here's the info on the four lenses:

Kaidomain Lens

  • Outer diameter: 108mm
  • Inner diameter: 101mm
  • Height: 22.2mm
  • Epitaxial thickness: 2mm
  • Focal length: 190mm

Edmund AX42448 Grade 2

  • LENS COND PCX 113MM DIA X 212MM FL
  • 20mm thick and 3mm at the rim

Edmund AX32345 Grade 1

  • LENS PCX 95MM DIA X 166MM FL
  • 16mm thick and 3mm at the rim

Edmund AX99668 Grade 1

  • LENS COND PCX 94.5MM DIA X 125MM FL

The worst lens of the bunch, as far as clarity and condition is the KD lens. The next worse is the grade 2 Edmunds lens. The best one is the AX32345 Grade 1 Edmunds lens. It's really clean, clear and the coating is great.

An XM-L2 on my aluminum heat sink.

I will be trying to get the highest lux at one meter, with all four lenses.

Here's the results:

Edmunds AX42448 105,700 - also the smallest diameter spot, no shock there.

Edmunds AX32345 104,800

KD 108mm 104,300

Edmunds AX99668 104,200 - although the lux is close, the spot was noticeably bigger.

If Edmunds can get me another AX42448 in better condition, I will use it. If not, then I will be using the AX32345 and that will change everything, as it's a smaller diameter lens, so the PVC pipe idea goes out the window. Probably I will have to form a metal head, but I really don't want to have to try that.

I really like the AX32345 due to the fact that it's flawless and has a great coating on the lens. It's the best of the bunch for clarity and the lux is so close, who really cares?

What did I prove out? The lens with the longest focal length, gives the smallest spot and the highest lux. I just wanted to see how big a difference between a shorter focal length lens and a longer one. It's not much difference, but there is some.

The other interesting thing to me, was the fact that the lux did not change at all with or without a head around the lens. The lux read the same when the lenses were held in open air, over the led and inside the PVC head, so no head is really necessary, since the lens is only going to catch the light straight off the led and any stray light has no affect on the center spot. Maybe I should just use a wire cage and leave it at that.

That's it for now, back to the drawing board and waiting for more parts to come in.

Good work OL. Thanks for posting the detailed results, including the stuff you didn’t like.

Isn’t an approximately equal lux w/ a larger spot a good thing? I thought that would indicate more light OTF w/ the same throw.