I already ordered the SST-50 4A driver for the STL, and I’m thinking of an aspheric lens to place in front of it. Ideally, it would replace the plain glass that’s already on the flashlight(58mm diameter with 2mm thickness).
The only worry that I have is that I don’t know if the focal point would be where the LED is(so I get a straight beam). The LED is 40mm from where the lens would be, to the end of the reflector.
The only lens that’s close to what I need in diameter is this one.
How do I know what distance do I need to place it from the LED so it will shoot a straight beam?
P.S. Do you think the 4A driver is too much for the STL’s heatsink? I don’t think it will be run for more than 5 minutes straight.
Sounds interesting, but I’m thinking 40mm might be a bit too far away, and you have no way of getting it closer to the emitter, unless you cut out part of the head, but then you also need to get a smaller lens.
However if the 4 amp driver works well, then that’s awesome, since mine runs at 3.24A at the tailcap. The heatsinking on the STL-V2 is alright, but I don’t think it can handle a lot of heat since the fins are so small.
I measured 1.62 amps at the tailcap actually… but I rather give the final number than letting some people who don’t know about current draw be clueless.
EDIT: I meant to say 3.24A to the driver, not at the tailcap. woops my mistake.
I was thinking of an add-on heatsink, that would basically be a negative of the actual heatsink on the inside, and bigger with more fins on the outside. Like a cylinder cut in half on the vertical axis, that gets glued with thermal paste on the actual one after it’s stripped of paint.
But this is a too complex mod for now, I’ll see if it heats too much after I put the new driver in. A TR-J12 host would be better, that has quite enough “room” for dissipating heat.
Regarding the aspheric, I think I’ll buy one of those and see how far from the LED it should be. The STL-V2 throws a nice beam, but a little too wide for my taste. Maybe I’m just accustomed to the hair thin beam of the 1JC8.
Yes, of course. Tomorrow I’m picking up the King, and will do some comparison beamshots between all the flashlights that I have(stock everything).
Then I’ll be waiting for the new drivers to arrive. The 60W one for the TR-J12 and the 4A one for the STL-V2.
BTW, I ordered this lens as someone in the comments said it works well with the XML-T6, projecting a 15cm square at 3.5meters. The focal point is ~30mm, so I need to get it down 1cm into the reflector. I hope it will fit nicely because of its 50mm diameter.
The hardest job will be to align it perfectly parallel to the reflector.
I used to have one of the above lens. It’s quality is terrible that it cannot project a LED die shape of my XR-E R2. I eneded up gave it to one of my friend and let him have fun with it.
Hopefully it is just my case. In the future if you report it with good comments then I might consider to buy one of this again
It was not the focal distance matter. I carried the lens on my hand and moved the lens back and forth in front of the LED and I could never obtain a projected LED shape. I tried the same thing with other aspherical lens and easily I can get a LED shape.
As willie said, the quality of these lens can be varied consider they are quite cheap.