Hotrod headlamp

I had someone ask me about headlamps and my reply was that I’m not that interested in playing around with them as there are a number of good headlamps available. After some circumstances that I won’t go into I’ve decided to ‘take the challenge’. I realize some of you may ask “why make a hotrod?” and my answer is I wanted to make something that seemed to standout amongst the commercially available products.

Parts I planned to use were TA driver with narsil from Lexel, triple luxeon 4000k from Led4power, some kinda pc heatsink that’s been kickin around my shed for ages and I bought a headlamp just for the strap and battery box. Headlamp

I started with a block of aluminium. (nevermind the straight cut :person_facepalming: )

I lathed it flat but did something (I don’t remember what) and ruined the first block.

I made the second attempt out of ~8mm plate. I’m pretty sure it’s 6061 aluminium.

After cutting it out I milled out the guts

….and the family calls.

To be continued…

Edit: back again

Switch parts

Thermal glued the driver and star to the heatsink

I also tried to make a pattern on the face of the light but it didn’t turn out quite as I hoped. I screwed up the direction of the knurl so now the vertical and the horizontal lines are angling the same direction, I wanted opposing directions :person_facepalming:


I cut some ‘wings’ to fit in the headband

I weighed the ingredients and was surprised to find it was lighter than the original light

Button test

Power in

I got to this point and realised I should have run the power in through heatsink so I could solder easily and ensure good wiring.

Stuffed in like sardines

A quick test on the power supply and it sucks all the amps it can get :smiling_imp: I’ll have to be careful with this one

The battery box also needs upgrading so hopefully I’ll get time this weekend to finish this project :disguised_face:

Very interesting project, subscribed!

Nice :+1:
This one, sir, will burn :smiling_imp:

such a cool project, many thanks for sharing. How hot does it get when wearing?

Wow. Nice work pp. Love the the idea using the grommet for the switch. Well done. :+1:

Project is not finished. I need to work on the battery box. So I haven’t worn it and don’t know if it will get branding iron hot or soldering iron hot.

Thanks guys :beer:

The heat sink seems to be 40x40x15mm. It is really a Hotrod. :smiley:

Am I right in saying that if it pulls 40W as per the measurements shown, about half of that is light output, so there is only 20W of heat to deal with?

With a heat sink like that, it’s possible heat may not be an issue at all? I can’t imagine a 20W soldering iron heating up that heat sink to the point where the fin end is uncomfortably hot.

Am I being unrealistic?

Very cool project. I like your water proof switch. Interesting to see your custom work with all that heatsinking still comes in lighter than the original doner light.

Yes.

FET driven triple will heat that thing up pretty good :wink:

No.
Light output is more like 10 to 15%.

That’s really cool Pinkpanda. I like it! Thanks for posting the build.

Turbo test.

Hahaha that’s funny freeme :laughing:

I did get to wonder if maybe I’ll end up like Michael Jackson and burn my hair off. Hence I made this video of the thermal step down. I’m wondering how much of a difference it makes having the driver side by side to the mcpcb and in the same cavity. Of course 10+ amps was always going to be too much for a headlamp anyways. Maybe a fan should’ve been on the menu.

Looks like you could end up with an imprint of that heat sink on your forehead— WARNING—stay away from hair products when in use— :smiley:

It would be interesting to see the same test with a slight breeze running across the heat sink.
21 degrees ambient. Its about half that here. :person_facepalming:

now you need to add a cooling fan

I couldn’t resist

Oh I bet that’s what ruined Michaels hair do…… :laughing:

I did think about the airflow or lack thereof but figured the initial heat being generated would not be swayed much. Turbo charged heating….

Also my garage is kinda cosy. It was a sunny (but not too warm) day yesterday and the heat emitted from 2 car engines makes it warmer in the garage than in the house.

Wow that just gave me an idea. Imagine someone created an Oslon 500kcd headlamp with a remote control. You can turn it on anytime at will and will scare the shit out of people.