I got this pair of 365nm UV emitters off ebay today, they were supposed to be the white base one’s like from IO (which I also have 2 of on the way) but they’re these green base one’s.
I threw together an A6 host I had to test it, it really seems like its 365 with very little visible output. It seems to have a higher vF and was only doing .67A direct drive from an NCRB at 4.2V so I zener modded a 105C with 5 7135’s and am running it from 2x CR123, it’s now pulling the 1.75A the 5*7135’s should be and it seems (by eye) exactly even with a LEDENGIN emitter I have here running at 1.3A which is really exciting.
Im really happy with this build, it went together very nicely. I actually think I like it more than my LZ1 L2C (tho being budget friendly helps a lot). This light is going to a mechanic buddy for xmas who needs a UV light for leak detection, not sure if I’ll use the A6 host but it ended up so nice I might just leave it as is.
with the 2 CR123’s slightly depleted running at 1.687A its pulling 4.22v. This was my last set of CR123’s (my little sis burned threw the rest on her Adirondacks camping trip last month). When I get more I’ll take another measurement with full cells (both of these are still >3v but I ran the light about 30 minutes total so they are somewhat wore down).
That doesnt seem too bad, I think this is just a crappy emitter, I bet its vF vs I graph is a pretty strange shape tho but I’m not really setup to test anything like that.
I was planning on showing mine off once I build one to my mechanic friends. A while back when I was over there, they turned off all the lights in the shop and was using a small florescent black light to find a leak. I figure they wouldn’t have to turn the lights out with this.
Also I can’t wait until my penlights come. I’ll show them what they are missing. The ones they got from the Snap-On truck are a overpriced joke.
Since the color SinkPADs aren’t available, having a DTP solution has been bugging me. Since the LZ1 thermal slug extends into the cathode and anode pads, your solution was to cut the traces of the center two pads of the cathode and anode of the color SinkPAD.
Then I stumbled upon this thread where djozz made a XML Color board from a 16mm round XML SinkPAD. He cut through the traces with a scalpel, checked for continuity and filled the cuts in with Arctic Alumina to keep the solder out of where it shouldn’t go. https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/26139
Then I had a brainfart after seeing how the traces of the 16mm round look and came up with a idea on mounting a LZ1 on a 16mm round SinkPad. I’d prefer to use a the 20mm star so I could use a host like a Convoy M1 or M2 but I can’t find any high res shots of the 20mm SinkPAD to see how the traces look on that model.
What do you think? Will my brainfart work or did I just end up having diarrhea of the brain?
According to my test of the XM-L colour there is a 15% gain at 2A current when a DTP copper board is used. For some it is not really worth the trouble (you are not quite going to see that difference), for others it is: once you're done that extra 15% is 'for free' after all. And I reckon it will improve the lifetime of the led as well (for who-ever is interested in that, it is not quite a common BLF concern :evil: )
djozz, does that math add up? If the emitter has a recommended max of 1A, and you drive it at 2A on copper for a 15% gain, how can the life of the emitter actually be longer?
And remember, 15% of a fairly low number is not much of a gain. A triple XP-L that makes 3000 lumens shows a nice gain when talking 15%, a UV emitter with 30-50 lumens? Well, obviously the gains are significantly less noticeable.
Much easier to burn your retina’s though, so I guess there’s benefits…
As far as “free” goes, time spent modifying the star to get a 15% gain is not considered by most to be free. Depends on if you’re playing or paying.
Adjust the scenario a little bit and assume that the LED will be driven at 2A in both situations (DTP or no DTP). The relative life of the emitter will probably be longer with DTP vs no DTP.
On the rest, I don’t know but I assume that 15% is just as difficult to notice at 3000 lumens as 300 lumens. :~
I’m not downplaying the value of an extra 15% though. If gains like that are stacked they can become lucrative.
What I did not test is what happens if more than one die at a time is switched on. Heat dissipation may get more critical then and more profit may be expected from a DTP-board.
I'm not sure if the perception of an actual 15% output difference would be different at high or low lumens. Interesting question :-)
It depends. If light perception is logarithmic, 15% at any level should look just as big (or small) as at any other level. If it’s cubic like selfbuilt thinks, 15% would be more visible at higher levels than it would be at lower levels.
But then there’s also the matter of what the light is actually illuminating. 3000 lumens in a small box looks a lot brighter than 3000 lumens in a large room, and our visual perception is based on lux instead of lumens.
I don’t know about anyone else, but my visual range goes from about 0.001 cd to ~50,000 cd (lower, if my pupils aren’t fully contracted). Anything above that is basically “clipping”. But I’m photosensitive; most people have a higher low and a higher high.
In any case, “15% more than sunlight” should look like a bigger difference than “15% more than moonlight”. And in a flashlight, the 15% difference would be more noticeable up close simply because it would start at a higher lux.
Yes, but if you are looking at a moon mode that is 1 lumen, add 15% and what do you have? Still ridiculously low output. If you have 3500 lumens, add 15% and you have 4025 lumens. Maybe it’s just me but I can’t see many people wanting 1.15 lumens over 1 lumen to any large extent, surely not willing to pay extra for it, but 4025 over 3500… most are willing to pay extra for that! So perspective rears it’s ugly head once again.
If I remember correctly, 15% and even less was always an excellent gain to justify modding a light at all. This kind of gain has lured many a potential flashaholic into the dire straights of shelves full of lights! It’s why we buy one bin higher emitter, an IMR cell, an AR lens, always looking to add single digit percentage point gains in an attempt to get that 15 to 20% total increase. I think most of us do that all the time.
I am one that will spend hours making a heat sink to fill the head of a light, not for what it might bring to performance but to fill the lens around a 24mm optic when the light has a 35mm opening. Aesthetics drive me to do a lot of things where performance isn’t even measured. In the same way that I use big chunks of copper, to please my mind and put heft in my hand. I don’t really care if it cools more or costs more, that’s not at all the point. Not for me anyway.
I’m sure there are those here that use lights in their work, as the guy that uses a UV light for forensic search missions. Gotta be good and simply has to get the job done. That’s a different story. One of those times when the Jurassic Park theme kicks in…“Spared no expense…”
I think that’s kind of what I said. From what I can tell, the science backs up that approach, since a 15% increase from sunlight looks like a much bigger difference than a 15% increase from moonlight. Going from 0.3 lm to 3 lm is a 10X increase, but it only looks about as big as going from 30 lm to 100 lm, a 3.3X increase. And when you get up to 3000 lm, a jump up to 4000 looks pretty big too even though it’s only a 0.33X increase.
But looking at it in different ways. I’m talking about a percentage of a large number is a much bigger piece of the pie. You’re talking about the appearance of that piece of pie. lol
Give me 25% of a 12” pie any day, over a 25% portion of one of those little single serving pies that comes in a plastic bag. Still a quarter of the pie, man I must be hungry, pecan pie on the brain!
Carry on…
Edit: I’ll go find me another one of these… notice the halo lights around my head, at my best with large amounts of food in front of me! :bigsmile:
It was a 1/2 lb of fresh hamburger, massive sandwich that even I had difficulty getting my big mouth around! I did it justice, ate the entire thing and all the fries. Mmmmm, gotta get back there… little mom & pop greasy spoon.
