EBRZM-16 just over 1000 Kcd thrower

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
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EBRZM-16 800 Kcd 1M cd thrower

Hi,

Again me bothering you and my neighbors :stuck_out_tongue: with flashlights experimenting :slight_smile:

Trying to increase the Kcd numbers as much as possible and thinking about it, got me to the new project. This is a mod and review in progress so will add here more photos and measurements as the work will progress.

What it is?

Well basically is just a recoil type of thrower. Big recoil I must add, not too much big because of the difficulties finding appropriate parts and also from the fact that I wanted one portable and easy handled by just one hand.

How hard it is to do?

Pretty easy I must say. (I think it’s the genius in me that make this things so easy to do :stuck_out_tongue: ) And cheap dirty cheap :stuck_out_tongue: I think anyone can do it and bother your neighbors with some dense photon beams, will be easier than ever 

Schematics (how it works)

I call it ERZM (ERVIN’S RECOIL ZOOM MIRROR :stuck_out_tongue: )
And this is how it looks in the actual state

The parts are:

β€’ Zoom Flashlight

Just any zoomable will do, I use some cheap one like this before, and recently UF- T20, but really anything with some lenses between the led and the concave mirror should work.
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β€’ Concave mirror

Well this may sound like a difficult thing to have, but it’s easy. After searching a lot in internet I see an interesting phenomenon, big concave mirrors are relatively expensive and hard to get. They tend to be heavy too. Of course smaller they get, cheaper and easy to purchase they become, if I remember right they stopped at around 200 mm diameter mark. Even that I like that diameter still was expensive for my project, after all I just want to play around. So I start to look at zoom mirrors the ones that are used for makeup or similar things. Of course the quality gets a hit generally speaking, but they are cheap and easy to find. Well it turn out that those are easy to be obtained. Going in one local marked near my home I find a small treasure :slight_smile:

Bingo!
It’s around 160 mm in diameter and it’s labeled as a 5x zoom mirror in one side the other is just flat mirror.
The interesting phenomenon is that 160 ~180 mm is the max diameter you can find for this kind of zoom mirrors, after that it looks like the standard in industry think that you need just an telescope mirror :stuck_out_tongue:

Long story short it worked very well. But have to say here that any zoom mirror should work, if u like to experiment don’t look after this particular model just play with whatever zoom mirror you can find. Depending on quality some will work little better and some worse, but all should work some how.

Interesting bit is that having a zoom flashlight you can alter the angle of beam and this in combination with the distance to mirror gave a lot of flexibility. What this mean?
Again what ever mirror you should find there are big chances it will work very well after some fine tuning in zoom angle and distance to mirror.

β€’ an basic body to hold together the parts

After some thinking I just come up with this, it’s an electrical component usually used to hold the wires together in place. It’s easy to work with its light and strong enough for what it will be used.

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β€’ something to hold parts together

Pretty easy this :stuck_out_tongue:

Well this is the end product (for now ! )

Some numbers:

With the cheap zoom it gave me around 250Kcd or 1000 meters
With stock uft20 cant remember now have to find if I have some written data somewhere
With modified uft20 (more info here=> UF-T20 REVIEW) around 750 to 800 Kcd or 1788 meters throw.

For non believers :stuck_out_tongue:
Some photo

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(Fotoja e pmjes nga dritaraja ditenβ€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”-
Naten
Naten me zoom the tjeshte uftz20 modifikuarβ€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”-
Zoom pasqyreβ€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”-
Uftz20 stok pasqureβ€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”-
Uft20 modicuar pasqyreβ€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”-)

^ dont pay atention to this, too tired to finish all review for today so …. :stuck_out_tongue:

Thank you for the reading!

2

:smiley:

great work! thumb

3

Lookin' good! 8)

4

Wow, good stuff!

Thanks for sharing.

5

:open_mouth:

6

HA! First I occupy all shelves in the house with flashlights and batteries and chargers. Then I steal her makeup mirror! My wife will kill me for sure! LOL!

7

Nice work using those cheap mirrors :-)

What if you do not use a zoom flashlight, but just the bare emitter, e.g. just remove the head of the UF-T20? I'd say it would increase the throw even further (but the beam would be way narrower). Do you have beam-shots of the set-up actually illuminating something, to get a better idea of the throw?

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i’m wondering how you figured out the focal length requirements for this also before buying the mirror. i think it was a good idea coming up with this precollimator set up. it allows a decent amount of light to hit the mirror, over the required distance to focus the light. i’m not sure it would work so well any other way, bare emitter=low coverage angle (without a short focus mirror), reflector/optic=mixed light angles? also curious what the beam spot looks like

9

Wow. I didn’t even know there’s a zoom mirror before this. Now I want one :smiley:

How did you measure the lux? It looks from the pictures the focus is not infinity, the point of convergence is far away.

10

He didn’t need to know the focal length. He built it all after buying the mirror.

I just tried this holding a cheap zoomie and the wifes mirror in my hands. The beam was disfigured but a marked improvement on throw.

Really ghetto looking with exceptional results. Well done Ervin :crown:

11

the focal length of the mirror affects the required amount of precollimation, the amount of precollimation will affect the amount of light hitting the mirror. anyway sort of moot with the number of these mirrors available :stuck_out_tongue:

ervin, have you thought about reducing the size of the setup by using two concave mirrors?

12

Nice work. Love the out of the box thinking.

13

Holy cow I was just wondering about this very idea after looking at some microwave transmission antennae. I played with my wife’s mirror too but not on a ruler just hand held and I couldn’t quite get it too work. It made me wonder about going bigger and to center it like those fat telescopes. That have a name but I’m too tire to think. Nicely done and cool pictures.

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First thank you all, and sorry for late reply, but i have less and less time lately.

have made some schematics for some new more compact ideas, will upload in first post as soon as i can. maybe someone with some spare time and some nice equipment could have some fun some day. :slight_smile:

@djozz β€œWhat if you do not use a zoom flashlight, but just the bare emitter, e.g. just remove the head of the UF-T20? I’d say it would increase the throw even further (but the beam would be way narrower). Do you have beam-shots of the set-up actually illuminating something, to get a better idea of the throw?”

of course I have tried that, but the result was not that good. first as you say the beam would be way narrower, the spot very very small. but there is another problem, the beam quality downgrade too, the projected image go full artifacts too. the cheap mirrors shows their true face in this setup i think. using lens as pre collimator rise the overall performance (more light is captured ) but also the quality of beam.

@islisis_β€œi’m wondering how you figured out the focal length requirements for this also before buying the mirror. i think it was a good idea coming up with this precollimator set up. it allows a decent amount of light to hit the mirror, over the required distance to focus the light. i’m not sure it would work so well any other way, bare emitter=low coverage angle (without a short focus mirror), reflector/optic=mixed light angles? also curious what the beam spot looks like”
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I try to touch this subject a little in the review on my first post, but understand that without proper examples is not that clear. Will try to make schematics hoping it will explain something.

Lets assume that in the A we have an ideal setup.

Now going to B we have an mirror with a larger f. using the same lens but playing with x and y we still can find a right setup that give us an clear projection. In this case x become bigger and y smaller. We just lose mirror area as an unused space so overall performance can suffer a bit, but the system will work somehow, just working with x and y. in the worst case scenario going to extremes we will need to add some additional lenses. Case C. in extremes we go in normal reflector setup without the need for lenses.
In the end will add some photos and also will try to finish first post with additional photos.

β€œ ervin, have you thought about reducing the size of the setup by using two concave mirrors?”

not 2 concave mirrors but have thought of other ways:

maybe one day will go after those projects but i am shorts on tools

again thank you all for your kind words, really appreciate.
Photos(will try to edit later with proper explanation and if u click they go full size ):

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beam finally hit 1M cd :stuck_out_tongue:

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thanks- i wish i could say i understand from the diagrams, but i’ll come back to it later :stuck_out_tongue:

for the indoor shots you should try using low mode and low exposure to get a better pic of the profile :slight_smile:

16

Very cool! That is really going out there. In your last two diagrams, the last diagram using the parabolic mirror- I wonder if putting the light source opposite of the large reflector might be easier and achieve similar results but be easier to focus. I am really enjoying watching your work. Please keep it up!

BTW, there is some information on a post here that might give you some more information that might be helpful. It’s different from what you are doing but the discussion and geometry are very related.

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. . . beam finally hit 1M cd.

Daaaamn! Sounds more like laser territory than flashlight territory. Congrats man. You probably should be careful for aircraft when you point that monster up into the sky.

18

Wow awesome!

A cheap zoomie + a cheap makeup mirror = mega throw!!! :bigsmile:

19

Just when I thought I’d seen everything. Very clever!

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Shame you don't have some room to cut that puppy loose! Bet the people in the apartments aren't all that pleased with your invention... ;)