The led and driver were not mounted back to backon the same heatsink, first one i dont think it was secured to the heatsink properly. The second one i think fried because the led shelf was too thin and there was nothing stopping the heat from the led hitting the driver. Sort of like putting a blowtorch or heat gun on it.
If you look at the L6 the led actually sits on a 60mm x 5mm disk that is cut from the billet. I was thinking of putting the led on a copper core with aluminium fins stacked on it then the drive housing screws on the end to secure the stack.
I have the materials to build it because when i get an idea i collect the materials then work out how to do it. I wish i could use cad it would save me a lot of time with dimensions and clearances.
When I was first playing with the CXB3590, at just ~70w, it was causing my ghetto wood COB-Clamp to smoke. I can only imagine what a Vero29 at ~170w would do.
Tonight I’m slightly annoyed that I have all these Angela series reflectors that I’ll likely never use as it seems the Lena series is just superior.
Either way, I’m getting ready to take the CXB3590 out for a walk using the testing rig with the Lenina-S attached. I modified the mount a bit more with a knife and it actually seems to sit down almost properly now. I really should drill and tap some mounting holes but silly me left all my M3 taps at work. Oh, and I wrapped the diffuser lens with some black electrical tape to block the light piping.
I don’t think the diffuser lens is needed with that reflector when used with a massive LES. It’s not surprising that it doesn’t throw like the Angela-S given the difference in size but it instead makes a pretty darn big hot spot with lots of spill. It appears that there is a ring around the edge of the hot spot that is brighter than the center but it is pretty subtle. I think this is going to be an excellent combo for the Super L6.
Nice can’t wait to see it… Have a little business trip so won’t have time to do much physical work but I’ll have my laptop with me to mess around with CAD…
The 36V version stayed in a pretty good range heat-wise, I think pretty manageable with some form of active cooling. The 68V version however, makes more light and more heat, and the fan on the 900W boost converter work a lot harder (also I’m stepping up from 22.2-25.2V).
I think though with the TaskLED drivers running it at such high power requires some “extra” heat-sinking - i.e. having the entire back of the driver interfaced to a heatsink, and I think possibly with non-conductive thermal adhesive. I’m working to incorporate such into my design that it stays at a relatively cool temp, being I hope to push it past the 130W that it has been tested at.
Oh it wasn’t the thermals making the wood smoke. It was the intense light giving the wood a tan!
I had accidentally flashed my eyes a couple times when my sunglasses fell off as I was bench testing. Not fun. Coupling the adapter/mounting plate I made to the stock housing with thermal paste really helps with keeping temps under control.
Getting some more 18650s so I can my battery pack…
Been a little busy with some totally unrelated projects, hope to be back on this later this weekend.
Sorry if this was already posted. I’m not really into auto lights so haven’t followed this thread. Someone recently sent me a link to this video I thought it might be of interest to you guys.
Thanks for that… Yeah, I actually have a few of his LED drivers. They work to varying degrees depending on the COB used. I think I may know why but working around it I’m not sure. I have other options (TaskLED) and also other uses for the drives, but I did not want to use those square COBs he sells, as I have better ones.
I’ve been busy with everything but lights until lately.
I’ve refined the design for the battle lantern a bit and I’m getting close to ordering the material and tackling the CAM.
I’ve also reverse engineered the MeanWell LDH driver a bit. Turns out it is based on a RichTek RT8480. I’m still going through the design but it appears that MeanWell seriously derated it and it should be able to handle more than the 45w output. One easy change was a tweak to a calibration pot to increase the drive current from 1.05A to 1.3A so my LED would go from just 34w to 45w with this driver.
I may make some of my own driver boards. I suspect this will upset some, but I’m thinking about using a chip that would only do about 40-50v on the output to avoid DC electrocution risks. I know the 70v Vero29s are really tempting to use though. Also, I’ve had a hard time finding driver chips that can run at those higher voltages.
The Battle Lantern will run on a Milwaukee M18 battery for convience and will use the de-cased MeanWell driver board, however, I will likely use something more custom on the “lumen bazooka”.