I’m at the age where I don’t get excited too easily, but sometimes, something really small can do it for me.
I think beam tint and beam quality are just as important as blinding output. I developed the Smooth-Hybrid reflector just for that reason.
I really like a smooth beam but don’t want to resort to an orange peel reflector…it seem to ‘mush up’ the beam too much…especially in a small P60 sized reflector.
I now have a new lens that I’m calling Micro-Texture that has a really nice effect on the beam pattern.
A normal P60 orange peel reflector has about 200 or 300 good sized irregularities to coarsely diffuse the beam…the Micro-Textured lens has about 10,000.
When telling someone about this lens, two questions come up…how much does it reduce the output? and how much does it reduce the throw?.
Since it’s has a textured surface and not a frosted surface…it doesn’t reduce the output…because it’s AR, it increases the output over the stock lens -the output matches that of my clear AR lens.
It does reduce the throw, but only by about 2%… much less than an orange peel reflector would.
The Micro-Textured lens tends to make more visible difference if there are artifacts are in the beam…the worse beams will see the most improvement.
Even a orange peel reflector will have an improved beam pattern with the MT lens.
Here’s a photo of a Solarforce stock lens, AR lens and the MT AR lens (the lenses are 1” above the paper in the background).
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No beam shots…I’ve never had much luck with ‘white-wall’ beam shots.
Since you’ve read all of this, I need a few tester/reviewers -Here are the requirements:
You want a smooth beam without resorting to an orange peel reflector.
You have a Solarforce P60 light…preferably with some ugliness in the beam.
Your mailing address in in the ConUS.
You will report back after trying it for a while with your opinion.
First 5 to comment something like ‘gimme one’ or something equally eloquent.
No destructive testing on this lens… it’s the same material as my clear AR lens that was abused in an earlier test.
Paired with a Smooth-Hybrid reflector, I really can’t see why anyone would want an orange peel reflector. I’m not sure why anyone would want a smooth reflector without the MT lens…but that’s just me.
We’ll have to wait for the comments from the testers.
(For the ‘first 5’, please PM your address)
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New Info:
I’m adding my official testing of the MT lens. I’ve also added a diffusion lens to the mix. The diffusion lens is a ‘very fine diffusion’ but it is has the traditional frosted appearance. Even though, it’s very fine, it still diffuses more than I want and drops the output considerably.
For the output and throw test, I used a P60 with a 3.8A drop in. The drop in has a smooth-hybrid reflector installed. For both output and throw, I powered the light with a lab power supply set for 4.2v. The output test was performed with my integrating sphere. The throw was read at 2m and the throw was calculated.
First, the throw:
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There’s two ways to look at the throw from the MT lens… it reduces the throw compared to ‘no lens’ by 1.23%. More realistically, it actually increases the throw when compared to a stock Solarforce lens and gives better beam quality.
The traditional type of diffusion lens gives a very soft beam, but cuts the throw in half.
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Now, for the output test. The table within the graph makes a comparison of all lenses to ‘no lens’ and to the stock Solarforce lens.
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You will notice that both the AR lens and the MT lens are running above 99% efficiency. At this power level (3.8A), the MT lens only reduces the output by 3 lumens vs the AR lens. At this output level and with such a small difference, I’m temped to say ‘there’s no difference in output’.
So, for all the testers, you should see:
- a smoother beam
- more throw (if you replaced a stock SF lens)
- more output (if you replaced a stock SF lens)
Hopefully, over the weekend, everyone will have had a chance to try it out and give your feedback.
