Over the past few months I’ve been working on a project to creat as good of a light as I can for working in areas with not enough lighting. A situation I’m sure everyone on this forum has been in lol.
But yeah, this isn’t the start of a project that never end up going anywhere ether. I actually made what I think is a really good light for putting anywhere you need where you need to do a task, so you can’t be holding a flashlight, and a headlamp is for one reason or another impractical.
I’m on version 5 right now, and have bought enough parts to make 50 of them, anger making a batch of 20 of version 4 and selling them to people I know. I hope to maybe even get it UN38.3 certified so I can actually legally send them through the mail to people who wanna buy them that don’t live near me lol.
So here’s a quick rundown on the specs of what V5 will be.
Approximately 500lm output (3.2W with 192Lm/Emitters through a diffuser)
7 hours battery life at max brightness
Analog non PWM, non Linear dimming all the way down to >1 lm where it will last for over a month
2x EVE 35V 3500mah 18650 cells
USB-C charging at up to 12W and can be used while charging, and will still properly stop charging so it can remain plugged in indefinitely.
Light emitters fully diffused along half the outer surface for a light that won’t blind you even while looking directly at it, but still providing enough light to work with.
Strong N50 magnets on back alling with 1/4-20 threaded hole for getting it to stay anywhere you need.
I’d post more, but apperently as a new user I’m only allowed to embed one image. Lol
There’s lots more for me to talk about in terms of the design, features, and interesting problems I had to solve to get here, but for now I felt like I had to post this project somewhere on the Internet finally. Especially since it seems I will be making and selling them soon enough. I’ll talk more about it as people ask.
Welcome to BLF Chris, we share the same name I guess.
Make yourself comfortable here.
I’m just curious why you’ve decided to build own lamp while there’s plenty ready out of the shelf lights available? Was it rather a challenge or not being able to find suitable one?
My flashlight adventure started with cycling lamp. I was never satisfied with the stock ones so I’ve started learning how to make one myself. And then it rolled out spontanously
So, the first problem I always saw in available work lights is that so few of them have any diffuser over the bare emitters. Weather it be the cheapest Princess Auto/Harbor Freight special to multi hundred dollar Milwaukee, they all just had the bare emitters behind a piece of clear plastic, so any time you so much as glance in there direction, you just end up seeing spots. That’s why one of the first things I wanted to figure out was a good diffuser for the light. And it turns out, clear 3D printer filament, allong with some good infill settings make for quite a nice diffuser that I can in turn make any shape I want.
And here’s what the internals look like spread out.
(Nope, still just 1 image per post lol)
There’s 3 custom PCBs for the lights, 1st is the aluminum core LED board that takes 16x 3528 sized LED Emitters Wich are by far the cheapest and highest performing emitters you can get. The ones I’m using are 90CRI, 192lm/W 4000K, all for $0.045 a piece from DigiKey.
The next board is the boost driver that converts the 4.2-2.8V from the battery to ~12V the strings of 4 LEDs need. I’ve tested modules using the same chip to 92% efficiency at may brightness with this specific LED board as the load, Wich is pretty much as good as it gets for cheap and simple boost converters.
And finally, the battery charging and management board. This is the most complex board I’ve designed sofar, and it’s on version 6 right now. It’s based arround a TI BQ25616 USB charging IC that it smart enough to separately manage input, battery and load so that the battery is always charged properly without being effected by a changing load, alling with BC 1.2 charger direction so it won’t overload a device it’s plugged into for power. It also then adds a comparator based battery SOC indicator, and an extra layer of protection just in case. Again, there’s way more I wanna talk about with this board, as it is a module I can use in many other projects in the future.
Very nice! I’ve thought a bit about making a work light but never started on anything. One feature I’d like in a worklight is the ability to angle the light direction when it is sitting down. So perhaps that would involve some sort of piece that folds out of the bottom to hold it at an angle - kind of like how small picture frames will have a piece that folds out from the back to hold it standing upright, but angled.
Yeah, I hope to make use of the 1/4-20 threaded hole to make a few different mounting accessories. as it is, there is very little unused space especially in the bottom to fit a folding arm or hook, so it’d have to be external to the brick shape.
Oh, also I guess I could also mention the light measures 70mm x 70mm x 37mm
Probably gonna be a part of a future version, but right now I’m printing the enclosure out of ABS, and it’s surprisingly drop resistant, even from 6ft off the ground onto concrete multiple times. So I’m actually pretty satisfied with how durable it is ATM, but for harsher, more drop prone environments, I can see about working it in. It already actually has a TPU Printed Gasket between the 2 halves, that’s what makes it “water tight” (I haven’t fully tested water resistance).
Positioning, aiming and securing are the biggest problems with most utility/ work lights.
Trying to do those things in many different environments can be difficult.
Having a wide smooth beam in the color temperature and cri of your choice is important also. I suppose there may be times where you want a tighter spot.
This is what I came up with to try to address many of those issues.
I typically use one of my armytek angle lights. They have a beaded lens and cast a very wide smooth beam. It has a tail magnet so sometimes I don’t need the clamp system. Almost any light of your choice can be used in these clamps including this design.
I suspect that your lens cover is blocking 25% or more of the light output. That is just a wild guess though. That might be something you have to put up with in order to be able to look at it while directly in front of it.
