Hello all, here is my entry to the 13th annual Old Lumen’s Challenge.
I had decided to teach myself 3d modeling to get better use out of my 3d printer and on research found not many people had 3d printed flashlights.
After further research (including a post to r/flashlights) I was worried my project was doomed from the start, but I stubbornly plowed ahead and I’m glad I did!
I began with a few stipulations,
It needed to run off 1 or more 18650s as I had just disassembled a lawn mower battery and had an excess of them
It had to be handheld, I liked the spotlight monsters I’d seen online but that seemed too daunting for my level of experience
Simple is key
To start here’s my version history showing the major changes (i remembered to create versions for).
I began with a mockup built around expected dimensions of the internals. As we’ll see, many of those dimensions ended up wrong or changing except for the battery.
We can also see here I originally wanted to put the switch on the side, but for the switch I pilfered from an old flashlight that just wouldnt fit in a way i was happy with.
Note the extremely thin walls immediately around the heat sink (which i thickened for fear of loss of structural integrity) and the air holes around the battery for airflow to push air across the heat sink
(as an aside, anyone know how i can get it to allow me to post more than one pic at a time? I have the entire build typed out already and i dont want to spam)
Next i briefly played with the idea of only a fan as seen here, but I didnt like that idea. Though looking back I do like how compact this version was.
V3 had large changes, we can see I moved the switch to the tail which allowed me to add a nice curve to the handle/battery portion. I also thickened up the walls around the heat sink at this point.
I was really happy with this version using a Nichia 219C, a convoy S2+ reflector, and a QLITE REV.A 7135*8 driver. The only thing was the glow filament kept discoloring so I ditched it for the final product.
From here, i moved to if i wanted to make more for my family i wasnt going to spend what i did for a heat sink for it to take a month and a half coming from china. So I took to the internet and sourced a voron v6 hot end heat sink which, though smaller, should work better as the fins will be oriented vertically when being held
Here I streamlined the entire thing, shrunk the screws from M3 to M2, and changed from a reflector to a tir lens. I figured since i have those cutouts on the side I should use them
And here is the final version for now! I really like how the cutouts for airflow do multiduty by showing off the internals and function as a quasi-lantern.
Welcome to BLF guardianoflives!
It looks like a very nice project. I really like the idea of 3D-printed lights, since it allows other forum members to easily replicate them themselves. Have you considered making it from two water-sealed parts with the heatsink exposed between them, so the light would be waterproof?
I initially did, but the heat sink needs to be in direct contact with the MCPCB to conduct the heat and I haven’t come up with a good way to do that yet. If anyone has suggestions I’d be open to looking into it though!
