I know many of you flashaholics are engineer/machinist types, so I thought I'd ask for some advice about building a heatsink for my busted Dorcy light.
With my noggin and some crappy drawings, I have designed a basic prototype and what it should look like:
It's designed to fit in the flashlight tube with a certain internal diameter (referred to in the diagrams as diameter "b"), and fits flush with the head of the heatsink press fit against the thin diameter metal at the end of the flashlight tube (diameter "a").
Flashlight tube:
In the colored paint diagram, diameter "c" is going to be the same diameter of a circular pcb containing the led. Diameter "d" is for the circular current driver circuit board. Missing from the diagrams are the dimensions for the thicknesses of the LED pcb and the driver board.
The dotted lines in the cross-section diagram represent holes drilled to connect wires from the current driver to the LED.
My questions:
1. How difficult will it be for someone like me, a non-engineer with no CAD experience, to draw this up in such a program?
2. How hard would this be to machine this out of, say, aluminum or brass? Could it be done on a lathe or will the latest multi-axis CNC tech be required?
3. Provided I can draw it up and provide the metal stock, how much would it cost to cut it to this spec?
Unfortunately I don't have the driver board but I am using a 1050mA AMC-7135 board. Mostly I just wanted to get an idea of the difficulty of such an undertaking.
I will dig up the calipers and get you some dimensions tomorrow.
The first link is to an IGES Model, the second is to a 3D PDF File. Once you open the link, Download the files. In the 3D PDF, You can drag the model around using your mouse to see it in any 3d view.
