ADJ Pinspot II Teardown

A few years ago, I purchased an ADJ Pinspot II “3-watt” stage light for use with a mirror ball on a Christmas parade float. Now that I have a better understanding of how led-based lights work, I decided to do a quick tear down just to see what I owned.

Here’s a screencap from the American DJ website. This light is intended for use in stage shows. It’s packing a “3-watt cool white led source”. Oh goody.

Here’s the “exploded view” of my light:

This light uses an off-line 120vac 60hz power source delivering constant current at 700mA, so about 4.8vdc if that “3-watt” claim is believable.

There’s also a 3.3uF safety capacitor to ensure that meatheads, uh… I mean mobile DJs, don’t electrocute themselves when it starts to rain on their rave. We are working with AC current here.

OK, let’s get to the fun stuff. Here’s the PCB. I have no idea if it’s MC. Guessing not.

The heatsink is a custom aluminum piece that also acts as the light’s structural member and provides an attachment point for the light’s mounting bracket.

Here’s the led itself. It appears to be a CREE XP-E. This light is several years old. But based on the datasheet for the XP-E and the telltale gridlines, I think that’s it.

This is the primary optic. 20mm plano-convex.

Here’s the secondary optic. Its a 50mm plano-convex. The light came with a “6-degree” and a “12-degree” lens.

And now for the beamshots. This is with the primary lens only:

Here’s the pattern from the secondary lens. The beam itself was impossible to photograph. It’s just not intense enough to be seen by my phone camera. But it’s hourglass-shaped and spreads out considerably at a distance.

And the obligatory white-wall shot. The odd shape is due to not actually re-assembling the light. There are a ton of little screws in this thing that I didn’t feel like messing with. It normally throws a round spot. But those blue bands are always there.

Based on the XP-E datasheet, I’m guessing this little guy puts out at best, 270 raw lumens at 700mA. And that has to run through two lenses with a significant beam spread. I’ve got no way to measure the lux, but suffice to say it ain’t great. Especially considering this light sells for $45-55 US. Now that I have a frame of reference for my “thrower”, I’m wondering what an XHP-70.2 will look like. It’s got roughly 20x the output. plot, plot, plot…

Very interesting teardown. Thank you for sharing.

Just keep an eye on the heat, ’cause that heatsink ain’t getting bigger!

Yeah. After 30 minutes, it’s pretty warm to the touch. But it was designed to be mounted on an overhead truss. So compared to the other lights up there like incandescent PAR36’s, it’s relatively cold.

I may play around with it until I start the next project. I’ve got a reflector from an old MagLite I’d like to try. And I’d like to see if removing the primary optic makes a difference.