I was brought here during my investigation for a high power / non intrusive sized light source for spotlighting animals as lithium powered LED's are non existant here in New Zealand, After building a few of the convoy line and throwing away ciggy's for my new found addiction of high powered 'torches' ..I have tried to design a setup to build into the very common lantern style found here in the south Pacific... purely for wow factor
Constructive criticism appreciated, I hope you experts can point out some flaws in my design that will save me buying costly overseas parts or chasing my tail trying to fault find.
Sorry for the drawing, I am not an electrician and have basic knowledge around the theory so please don't crucify me. what I see, I understand..
I have Ample room to play with and none of the above parts are set in stone, especially the drivers.. I want multiple settings & maximum power to the point before I have to look at fans, so if you guy’s have some better ideas please share.
Welcome to the forum! Glad to have you with us! :DWow seems like a really nice build! Btw congrats on dropping the addiction on those ciggies! sorry I couldn’t be of much help since I myself is a nooo and hasn’t done any major mods
Wow! For a first post, nice. Welcome to blf by the way. If size is not of a concern to you, it would be great if you
Try out those 100w leds which are less than 10$ each. Mount 5 in a copper cube and you got a sun like lantern in your hands, with uniform 360 degree flood light. If flashlight form is desired, those xhp70 are better overall.
Sorry I was referring to the lantern style below, being plastic bodied I shied away from multi emitter setups and headed towards a single emitter driven hard, hopefully putting out an outrageous amount of light while still giving a fair bit of throw inside a tight reflector,
I use torches such as UniqueFire T20 with XPG2 (don’t dedome or you will have pencil thin beam), you can blackout that annoying ring of light which is a reflection of the pill, XHP70 would most likely light up the whole neighbourhood, assuming your targeting Red deer and maybe on DOC land then it’s best not to have flood, it tends to let people know what you’re up to. Also the T20 is compact and easy to carry around, you can get rail mounts for scope and quick breakaway attachment from aliexpress for peanuts. T20 is available on Fasttech Site. Do you have access to any areas with fallow? Just asking also be careful not to use too much light, the deer will turn away if too bright. If DOC is reading this I’m only kidding. Oh and if your just shooting possums, kudos. Spring is coming
This build is purely to blow the minds of anyone here at home that own / owned the classic 9v dolphins,
I built a Convoy c8 with an xm-l2 in a smooth reflector, direct drive with 3 regulated modes on the new sanyo unprotected 18650's which puts out the same throw as the big 100w spotlights we've grown up on, except the hotspot is perhaps 5x as large ..easy to throw a couple of 18650's in the pack, gone are the days of carrying spare 12v batts
Oh and i have moonlight modes to keep DOC rugged up in their hut haha
Fallow deer are our primary animal we hunt, i'm located in Taranaki... flick me a PM
It looks like you have gathered a quality set of parts in your post above. :-) I'm not familiar with that driver but I know some folks here at BLF have used it with great succes. A big concern for a hard driven XHP70 is how to get the heat out of the plastic housing. A heatsink will collect the heat for a while but at some point it has to go somewhere or else the spotlight can only be used for short bursts. So either a finned section of the heatsink must hang out of the housing somewhere, or you need a fan for cooling the heatsink. Using a fan will keep the lamp waterproof a challenge.
Hi from Wellies! Pretty good to see a few Kiwis on here.
I’m just a newbie to the Flashlights and am pretty junk at the modding side of things. But i grew up on the Dolphin lights, Playing with the old man’s Dolphin when i was a kid sparked the flame for me. So i can’t wait to see how it all goes! Heaps of awesome people on here to help ya out too.
As djozz mentioned, ideally, you should get the heat out of that light somehow. If driven hard, that heatsink can easily get over 100deg C and a light melting in your hands while showing off does not do your pride much good. :weary:
*How are you going to add the reflector/LED/ heatsink assembly into the light? Have you made measurements or are just hoping for the best and ready to ratch something? (I do that quite often)
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As an idea, does anyone think something like this as a heatsink can work? Solder the LED to the pad and keep the fins outside the body?
Welcome to the forums. In order to get the most out of an XHP70, I would recommend 10 amps or more. The Taskled drivers are great, but they do not push a lot of amps. I would go with a FET driver from RMM - Mountain Electronics. It can run 2S with no problem and it can be run with a clicky or with a momentary. It can even be done with a regulator instead of a zener, so the momentary will not cause parasitic drain. Contact RMM here via PM on this. This is with the XHP70 running 6V. If you go 12V, then it would not work the same.
Definitely, you will need more heat sinking and/or better heat transfer out of the plastic body light. A finned heat sink is an idea, or a cooling fan, to help take heat out of the plastic housing. It will heat up so fast, you won't believe it. Fast enough to melt plastic before you blink twice. Of course, you could make an aluminum head and body out of aluminum tubing and rod stock as well. I don't know if that kind of thing is available over there. It's easy to get in the US, but I don't know about international.
I would not dedome the led if using the LUM5-90 reflector, unless you want a very tight spot. The spot as is, will be very nice with the domed led in that reflector.
I get the impression you know this, but just in case. If you configure the emitter for 12 volt with a 3S2P cell arrangement, you will be limited to a boost driver of the two you linked to. Since voltage is boosted, a lot more current is pulled from the cells than it feed to the emitter. So run time will be shortened.
If you configure the emitter for 6V, than you will have to used a buck driver like the first one you linked to. Two other buck drivers that can drive the emitter pretty hard would the RMM's KK-Seis-um (FW of your choice) and the Chinese HX-1175b1 (not flashable without swapping MCU).
You could go 4S and direct drive the emitter at 12 volts (Or 2S and 6 volt configuration). If you want modes, RMM has some nice direct drive drivers.
RMM's 26mm Direct drive with LDO voltage regulator (moon,5%,15%,50%,100%)
in this case would config my batts to 2S3P for the 6v be safe to input? or would it be better to run 4S2P on the 12v?
Heatwise I'm limited to a heatsink around 8-10mm thick and 150mm diameter after I install the new reflector which is around 20mm deeper than stock, I have seen some finned copper sinks fitting this description on the net somewhere, not that I saved them ..I like eebowlers idea with the sink exiting the housing as something like that would be easier to seal, Realistically though I would be running it at 15% for general walking around and bump up to 100% for very short periods, keeping in mind that this would only be used as a secondary searchlight for lighting up a beach etc ...or burning the paddocks next door ...on & off stuff
The heatsink would be suspended inside the housing with the only contact to the plastic being at the face of the reflector, I was hoping that I could get a "reasonable" runtime before having to break it open and let it take a breath, notifying me when it was too hot to comfortably hold...
^ Both of those configs will work. From a stand point of run time and efficiency, 4S into 12V is better. Double the voltage means half the current. So less stress and loss occurs in the springs and everything else that flows current.
May I ask what specific DD driver you are thinking about?
I have tried to do external heat sinking on a plastic light. It didn't go well for me because I ran into issues like what would happen if the external heat sink was to smacked into something. The blow would likely transmit directly to the LED and maybe shift it enough to cause reflect/LED impact. It had a curvy body and water proofing became a joke. Unless I didn't ever want to open up the light again (Goes against my nature. That's what I do. I a light open upper).
I would be much easier to forget about water proofing and go with a fan and some vent holes. Most plastic lights are not water proof anyway. Buf if you're like me, easy usually is low on the priority list.
..I have tried to design a setup to build into the very common lantern style found here in the south Pacific... purely for wow factor
sorry I couldn’t be of much help since I myself is a nooo and hasn’t done any major mods 
..easy to throw a couple of 18650's in the pack, gone are the days of carrying spare 12v batts 
Of course, you could make an aluminum head and body out of aluminum tubing and rod stock as well. I don't know if that kind of thing is available over there. It's easy to get in the US, but I don't know about international. 
..I like eebowlers idea with the sink exiting the housing as something like that would be easier to seal, Realistically though I would be running it at 15% for general walking around and bump up to 100% for very short periods, keeping in mind that this would only be used as a secondary searchlight for lighting up a beach etc ...or burning the paddocks next door 
...on & off stuff