Talking about lights with fans, I know you all meant production lights, but don’t forget my “Sleeper” light. :laughing:
It would have gone into production, but my Kickstarter campaign failed to raise 1 single dollar :innocent:
A single XHP-70, 4S1P direct drive, active cooling. I built it to get my feet wet, and because……………
The MICROFIRE PIONEER 3 looks to have intake and exhaust holes, but no mention of a fan. So it might be like the DX80, just have holes to let air circulate around an internal heatsink.
That’s cool, I’ve seen other custom built fan cooled lights, but production lights are rare. It’s so hard to make them because they have to be water tight and fool proof and designed to be rugged and last a long time. All very hard things to do.
Have they ever built a FB1?
Is there a review of that thing?
I remember the first time reading of it. Uuuuh 10.000lm
Now a Q8 can reach that region (for a short time)
Everyone knows the DX80 is a super flooder. Lots of lumens and spill.
In fact, there is a lot of spill right at my feet. For the fun of it I decided to try and improve it throw.
Take a look at this picture of the head of the DX80. This picture is looking straight down at it and it’s 8 XHP-70-2’s and their reflectors.
Now step back from it a ways, and what do you see?
It kinda looks like a single emitter, doesn’t it?
That means that the DX80 could become the engine for a thrower, If it was placed at the focal point of some huge parabolic reflector. Trouble is, I’m not about to hunt one down and pay for it. This is just for fun.
So I will approximate.
Here are two images side by side. On the left is a 2D graph of a parabola, and to the right is a truncated cone. (the bottom is cut off)
As an approximation, notice how the sides of the upper portion of the parabola start to straighten out and how a truncated parabola resembles a truncated cone.
and how similar it would be to adding a truncated parabola onto the top of the DX80 would be to simply adding a truncated cone
The black rectangle represents the head of the DX80
Now using a truncated cone in this fashion is certainly not optimal, but it will be an improvement. It will help to redirect some of the spill and reflect it down field.
All of that to explain that I am just going stick a reflective cone on the end of the light 
Before I go any further, I want to show a failed attempt at this, using an old stainless steel mixing bowl. This failed because the bowl did not reflect enough spill to make a huge difference. It helped but not by a lot. I spent about an hour and a half doing this, and it was for nothing. I’ll show the results here so as not to be a total waste, but nore importantly to show how to polish dull metal to a mirror finish. I will have to do this again in my second atempt.
Large SS mixing bowl
And then all the steps in polishing it and finally cutting the hole.
Remember, that effort failed.
On the second try I went to Dollar Tree and got a plastic megaphone and some reflective gift wrapping paper.
I also got a sheet of some Aluminum flashing.
I need to cut a template for the conical shape for the Aluminum, so I figured I might as well use the reflective wrapping paper for the template. That way I can get a preview of what the results will be like.
Left to so is polish the Aluminum and cut it to shape. the truncated cone has been fitted and the reflective paper is inside.
It works! Much less spill and more throw. It’s raining hard right now, so no beam shots.
The final beam pattern won’t be pretty, but it will be bright. This is 120 lumen on the ceiling.
I finished the Aluminum cone reflector.
I started off with a strip of aluminum flashing but it needs to be polished to a mirror finish before I shape it for the cone.
I quickly found out that it is coated, both sides. The polish does not react with the surface. I assumed it was clear lacquer, but no, lacquer thinner would not touch it. Neither would Xylene, Acetone, or even paint remover!
Only the MEK would soften it, it must be a thin clear vinyl coating. This part was MUCH too difficult!
Only spraying it over and over with MEK and using 000 steel wood would remove it.
First step was wet sanding it with 1200 sand paper, then buffing with copper polish.
Then finishing up with Mothers Mag and Aluminum polish. These last steps were much easier than removing the coating, ech!
Then I taped the paper template over the aluminum and cut around it with these.
The vinyl cone fits over the back of the light from behind and snaps into place, not harming the anodization.
Then the aluminum cone slides in from the front.
Hopefully tonight there will be good weather to test it out, but for now there is this.
The light is on 120 lumen mode, picture on left is looking straight into the reflector, the picture on the right is a little off center.
Strange things going on here. Remember a truncated cone is not ideal, nor are the emitters in any focal point.
Looking straight on, you can see a ring of virtual emitters (reflections) and looking off center a bunch of weirdness.
Point is though, more light is going straight ahead and less light is spilled.
For what it’s worth, here they are.
picture on the left is a frame grab of stock DX80, on the right with the extension.
What is most noticeable to me in real life is that their isn’t this pool of spill right in front of me when I turn the light on. These pictures do not show that as that area is out of view.
I got 2 x DX80`s and think the flashlight is brilliant.
I dont have the experience or knowledge of many here but I have been collecting flashlights for about 7 years now and literally have ` Hundreds` of flashlights.
DX80 is a Very powerful flashlight no doubt and the build quality looks and feels good .
Love the LED display and the button is easy to work.
Not sure how good the built in batteries are but they have been charging and working well so far.
Had them for about a week now and been using them both nearly every night and no problems ` So far ` !
I ` Love` the DX80 and it is a very impressive flashlight except for the ` Stainless steal cable screw lock on the end as a lanyard tie… ` VERY CHEAP effort ` and makes the flashlight look cheap. Can not understand ` WHY ` they would do such a silly thing .
Not sure I would have paid full price , I got the coupon code price but that 32,000 Lumens would have nagged at me till I got it.
For me the DX80 is a 5* flashlight so far .
Would like to know how I can check the lumens strength of any flashlight ?
Can I buy a light meter that will do it ?
Does a laser power meter work on flashlights as well ?..
Cheers, Mick
Lumens are hard to measure. Labs typically use a large integrating sphere with a calibrated lux meter.
Hobbyists tend to use a makeshift light tube made from pvc pipe and a cheap lux meter. A few members here have them. The hard part is calibrating it. Even then, what may be fairly accurate from 1 to 5000 lumen may not be very accurate when you get up to 30,000 lumen.
There’s a ceiling bounce app available for your phone, calibrate a torch you know others have got a similar output on and compare it. It helps to use a frosted diffuser of some sort as throwy lights get an advantage. Use a spacer under the shorter light too so they are the same distance from the ceiling. I set my Acebeam up as 14,900 lumens and my DX80 recorded 32,114 lumens after a second or so then started dropping off.
Shakes head.
Shakes head of the DX80? What? Is it broken? Won’t it switch on?
(ok, I’m a meany… )
Rocking the 5,000 lumen mode tonight for some time, not a hint of any heat whatsoever.
awesome pic! (and idea BTW)
Let the obsession begin.
Again.
Ok! Welcome to BLF! :partying_face:
Obsession for DX80… obsession for silver MT03II… obsession for boost driven MF01… It… won’t… stop!!!
What’s the name of this ceiling bounce app?
Anyone has a link?
Lux meter on the Google Play Store worked well for me. It saves the maximum figure recorded so you can go back and look at it. I don’t know how accurate it is as it will depend on the hardware calibration of the light sensor on your phone, but it is great for comparison.
For runtime graphs it works on my new Android 7 phone, but didnt on the Android 5 device before that
Thank you hIKARnoob. I love Imalent.