Triple XHP 70 using the LUM 5-90 reflectors and a huge head - 05/06/15 Finished- with beam shots.

A little music first. My kind of music that is.

I got an idea to try to make a Super Shocker. A 3-up light using three of the Illumination Machines LUM 5-90 reflectors. Don't know why, just because I guess. I really like the beam in these reflectors, with a XHP 70 led, so I thought three of them would be fun. Of course, I don't really know if it's possible to cut those reflectors and match then up. Making three-ups is something that isn't new, but I don't think anyone has tried such large reflectors.

I decided I needed some kind of template, so I sat down and did a little figuring and drawing and I came up with something that might work.

Then I had to figure out how the heck I could hold one of these big reflectors and cut it, so I took a piece of plywood and decided to make a fixture. I had two carpentry squares lying around and thought why not? I cut them and mounted them to the plywood and used the left over to add another piece each side, so I had a slot that a hacksaw might slide through.

Once I had that, I used a template, to figure out where to put some hold down screws and washers, to hold the reflector on.

Then I brought it to the edge of the table where I could hold the fixture in place, so it wouldn't move.

It looks like it will work...

Well, it's not at all easy, but it does cut.

Six cuts later and the reflectors almost look like I want, but they are not matched together very well, so.........

I used a brand new addition to the shop. A small sander. It helped to do what I would have done with sandpaper and files and it took a lot less time.

The three reflectors are stuck to the table with double sided tape and I have applied JB Weld to the seams. In a day or two, I can see if they are going to hold and I can decide if the seams are good enough. They are not perfect of course and I will have to figure out if I can accept them, or if I have to start all over again.

So, what the heck is the whole build going to be?

Well, the "head" will be a piece of 7" ID aluminum pipe and it will house the reflectors. I will have to buy a circle glass cutter, so I can make a lens myself, since I can't find a 7" lens for less than $100. The "heat sink" will be a piece of 7" OD aluminum rod stock, one inch thick and it will go into the back end of the head. The body will be 3" OD aluminum pipe with aluminum square tubing over top. The tail cap will also be aluminum. The batteries will be 12x26650 in 2S/6P and will fit into the 3" pipe. The contact plate will have to be special made and I will use a SRK FET driver, courtesy of RMM to power the beast for all it's worth. I am hoping 30 amps+.

The aluminum comes in tomorrow and I will show photos of it when it gets here. I think this build will take me a little while to finish.

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04/22/15 1 PM

The aluminum order came in today and the reflectors are done.

They did not come out perfect. I always want perfect, but they are close and I think they might work. I have more in case I have to make another set. I think with the fact that they are faceted, it won't matter much if they are not perfect. Time and beam shots will tell.

Lots of aluminum. The large tubing is 7" ID. The heat sink below that is 7" OD Round stock and it's 1" thick. It weighs in at about 5#, so I think I have enough mass to take heat for a while, before it gets too hot. The smaller tube is the battery holder and the square tube goes over top of that. I wanted a square body. The flat plate is the tail cap and the rectangular rod is for the handle. The thin 7" rings will be the bezel and the reflector holder.

Here's the reflectors in the big tube. They just clear the inside. I'm glad.

That's all for now. I got a lot of work to do.

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04/24/15 There will be a little break from this build, till I figure out how to smooth that 7" round disc. The sander has gone back to Harbor Freight. I can't recommend this sander, as it died while just working on the small parts. After a few minutes, it slowed down and then just about stopped. I have to say I sort of was afraid of this. It's cheap and it's Chinese, so it's a lottery as usual and I didn't win the lottery. I'm not messing around with another one, so it might be a while till I can smooth the big pieces with files and sandpaper. Doesn't look too great right now, but something will come out of it, somehow.

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04/25/15 Well, I'm back in business again, for the moment. I went to Home Depot and bought a Rigid Orbital Sander. It's more like a DA sander and it really works well. I did one side of the 7" round in about 10-15 minutes and got rid of the nasty saw marks. See, all this aluminum is "rough cut", meaning they sut to length, but the saw marks are very deep. They don't mess with fine blades and smooth cuts. They just get them cut and out the door and it's up to the buyer to smooth if necessary. Well, this little sander did one of the 2" rounds in less than 2 minutes, so it will save time. Anyhow, it's back to the garage again, to get something done.

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04/26/15 A little more done and lots and lots more to do. This is going to be a long build...

This is the sander. It's done a fairly good job. Better than I had hoped for.

This is after 150 grit. There are still some cut lines from the saw cutting that the vendor did. I am not going to get all of them out. This one will be covered up by the square body.

Somehow, I managed to get the overall height too short, so I could only partially sink the 7" round into the tubing, but it's in so tight it's never going to come out again.

I have some room at the top, so I am going to use some copper for platforms for the stars. These will be soldered and bolted down and the stars will be on top.

I have plenty to do. I have to devise some dividers in the round body, to keep the cells in place within the circle. I have some thin aluminum plate and I will probably use it, to make dividers.

I am thinking of these draw latches to hold the tail cap on the body.

Then, I have to try out cutting glass circles. This is an Expensive light! There's close to $100 just in glass and tools.

Ok, that's it for now. More when I get more done.

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04/27/15

I got the leds positioned and drilled holes for wires and hold down screws. Then I decided to do the driver pocket. I knew it would be a long hard job.

I had to use a step drill, to take out most of the material. It took about 60 drilled holes, to get most of the pocket open. Then I used an end mill bit in the drill press, to start smoothing. When I was drilling for the stars, I made a mistake and had to move one wire towards the outside of one star. The end result is that now one wire hole is outside the 3" inner body circle, but it's still within the 4" square outer body, so all is still ok. I made a channel for the wire, so it can go down in to the driver. The outer edge is milled for where the contact plate will go. I have ordered some 3oz FR4 board, to make a contact plate and the driver will be down under that. I have not cut the outer lip down to where it needs to be yet. Not until I get the contact plate cut, to see how thick it will be.

The inner round body will sit down on the outer ring of the contact plate for grounding.

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04/28/15 - So last night I decided I needed to make something to go over the reflectors, to cover up the open areas that would show around them, and to help keep the glass from pressing against them. After a couple hours with the dremel tool, I cam up with this. It still has to be finished, but you get the idea.

It's cut out of a sheet of 0.050" aluminum. It will be cleaned up and I will give it a brushed finish.

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04/29/15 - Picture is worth a thousand words.

Enough said. There's no stopping me now!

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05/01/15

The body is now attached to the head.

I used four 6-32 Stainless screws and drilled/tapped holes in the body. I think it will work fine. I plan on simply using Silicone between the body and head.

The contact plate is made too. I got FR4 Double sided Copper clad 3 ounce board in and I cut some semblance of a circle sing a pair of Tin snips. Then I used the dremel to get it closer to a circle and to the right diameter. I used a dremel bit in the drill press and cut out the copper to make a gap between Positive and Negative. I made up a fixture, so I could make a halfway decent cut out. Then I drilled a bunch of holes and used 12ga solid copper wire for the vias, to get to the other side of the board.

I still have a lot to do. It's nowhere near finished yet, but I'm getting there slowly.

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05/02/15 - I need to retire.

I thought I got a lot done today. I was happy. I got the outer battery box done including latches. The screws are actually being used for guide pins and don't hold anything.

I got the inner battery tube done, with spacers to keep the cells in place.

I got the driver wired to the contact plate using 12ga wire.

I got the leds in place and wired to the board. This is really going well.

I even got the body all bolted to the head and thought I might even power it up, just to see...

Then it dawned on me that I have no switch yet. I never even drilled for wires to come out of the head. I haven't even started the handle, which is where the momentary switch is going to be. I didn't even have it in my list of things to do.

How sad.

So, I tore it all back down completely, since I will have to drill the head yet again and do mill work to fab a handle. Now I'm going to go take a nap.

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05/06/15 - The light is done. I don't like the way it came out. It's rough, too rough and there's mistakes in the milling, due to it just being way too big for me to handle with the tools I have. Basically, I bit off more than I could chew and while it works, I'm sort of unhappy with the appearance. Anyhow, here's the rest of the photos and a couple of beam shots.

I already showed the driver going together, even though I had to redo it, the process was the same. Here's the driver with the body in place. The inner body touches against the driver, so it has ground.

One screw goes into the inner body, so the outer and inner are grounded.

The spring plate is copper. I coated it in solder one side and then put on the short springs. I used springs off 17mm Qlite drivers, due to length issues. Then I added copper braid to each one, to help take the resistance out. The coper plate is held by 4 screws that go thru from the tail cap and holds it tight. The 3 screws sticking out of the tail cap are for locater holes in the body, so it can only be put on one way.

4 screws that hold the spring plate on. All together I tapped 40 various holes, to put this light together. It was a real nightmare.

The handle is just straight aluminum rectangular stock. It's screwed down to the head with a couple of 10-24 bolts. All bolts in this light were stainless. The handle isn't pretty, but it's balanced well with cells in the light.

The top end is done. The bezel is held in with three set screws going from the outside into the ring. There are no O rings in this light. It is not water resistant and I would not take it out in bad weather. It wasn't meant for bad weather and I can't get O rings the right size.

12 Efest 26650 cells waiting for darkness.

I tried to take a photo of the light on, in the garage. I left the shutter at 1 second, just like I always do. It was a mistake.

I had to go down to 1/125 to get any kind of a decent shot of the center spot.

Since I am working day shift now, no more beam shots in the plant. So, I'm back to doing them here, at home. Yes, even at that distance, the light is so bright that it washes out the color of the tree.

The trees behind the ones I usually shoot. Normally you can't make them out all that good. Not any more.

It was very hard to hold this light while taking photos. It's just too heavy to handle for ant length of time, so the beam shots look fuzzy, but it's because the light was moving.

It is the brightest light I have ever done so far. It is brighter than a set of car high beams and it is very impressive. In the minute or so of runtime doing the shots, the head was already warm. Not hot, but you could easily tell it was heating up fast. Remember that head is over 5# and it's heating up fast...

Than's all folks.

Sweet :slight_smile:

Hi

Why do you cut the reflectors, when you build a head by yourself ?

Here is another example for three big reflectors in one head: Post 32

Whats the phone number to the nearest looney bin? If its not time for OL to pay it a visit it must be mine. Again l'm dumb struck.

Holy crap, Batman!!!

WOW! :open_mouth:

Wow, awesome build OL! Looking forward to this one taking shape! 8)

Wow!! This is gonna be one nasty flash!!

Looking forward to see the result!

Will this be 10.000 ish lumens?

just shocked to such great work on the reflector! wow.. man, thats pretty crazy

Try 13 - 15 thousand-ish! With the FET driver, and 12X 26650 cells, it may even be higher!

:bigsmile:

GREAT, just Great i love how you cut down those reflectors nice thinking

Where is the LIKE Button ? i will be following this thread tell this light shines the skies do you think i will see the beam from Egypt ? :bigsmile:

Please from where i can buy this LUM 5-90 reflectors

Great project, looking forward to the build.

And congratulations on the sander. I have a small disk sander (without the belt part) and I use it very very often, it is one of the best tools for modding (one example: sanding down a 20mm ledboard down to 16mm takes 5 minutes and it looks impeccable :-) )

HERE

Mad skills and imagination in action here. I have no concept of how careful you had to be to not bend or otherwise destroy those thin reflectors. So fricken impressed.

I thought quite a lot about that question. I could say that I wanted to duplicate the SRK and BTU style of 3 up, so that I could have lots of spill and a more floody beam. That sounds good, but the truth is that I only build lights for my entertainment and the way I am entertained is by testing myself. If I simply set 3 reflectors in a head, then I havenā€™t done anything to test myself. This kind of crazy stuff is really all about seeing if I can and forcing me to think of how I can. Otherwise, for me, myself and I, thereā€™s no reason to build something like this.

Yep, I have been wanting one of these sanders for a long time. It makes life easier and the older I get, the more I want to make whatā€™s left, easier.

Thanks David.

They are very thin and it was very hard. I found out right away that I needed more screws to hold the reflector in place and even then it was hard to cut. I couldnā€™t put much force on the saw. I just had to cut easily, with very little pressure and still they flexed a little. Nice thing about it was that you could flex them back again fairly easily.