The Baby Elephant

Recently, I built an 15.5Amp CBT-90 light based on FM Elephant with FM3V turbo head.
King of the Elephants! FM3V**CBT-90**15 Amp | Candle Power Flashlight Forum

Wife fell in love with it & confiscated it, claimed use is self defense when intruders break in to our house. She is no flasholic & usually could care less about my lights. The beauty of the Elephant is the hour glass figure, which is universally recognized as key element of beauty regardless of what it is.

She asked me why so big, why don’t they make a smaller one,? just like this, but smaller? No possible, I said, it’s made by this guy called Five Mega on CPF, he’s not going to make a smaller elephant.

Fast forward a few wks, it’s always in my head, I know FM isn’t going to , but could I made one my self? A baby Elephant next to the mother Elephant would be cool :slight_smile:

Here you go, this is my attempt at creating a Baby Elephant:

1. The head, shown to the left is a fluted Mag D head that has a mag D to Mag C adapter installed. The adapter is made from Mag C head, grind it down all the way & JB weld it to the inside & bottom of the mag D head.

A similar example of how to made Mad D to Mag C adapter:
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?288981-Mag-C-to-D-Adaptor-DIY

2. Switch section of the Mag C is used for the neck, with the end grind down to expose the bare alu for conductivity to baby elephant body shown next to it.

The baby elephant body is made from a section of Mag D tube, with tail cap fitted on both ends, the top one grind a big hole to fit the Mag C tube.

Top view:

3. Finished look, the Elephant family photo :).
Baby Elephant on the Left; Mom, FM3V Elephant in the Middle, Dad, Darth Vader on the right :

What LED and what optics? :D I love the host though.

Very cool lights!!!

Awesome!

Sweet!

Thanks guys,

I think I am going to put a copper PCB XML U2 with 12x7135 4.2A driver in there.
The C neck is small for heat sinking, so I Just made a one inch deep copper heat sink to max out the heat sinking & heat transfer.
to deal with the high drive current.

That looks very.. cute? :D

Thanks. Nice long weekend allows me to get back & finish the light.

Baby Elephant Next to a Camo Mag 1D
I used to think Mag 1D is cute, now think again, it looks chubby next to teh baby elephant :slight_smile:

Picture of light engines. Both have the excellent led-tech.de copper pcb U2, both are 12x7135 4.2A driver. The baby elephant used full copper heat sink to make up it’s smaller size.

One thing worth mentioning is that single 26650 IMR could not get 12x7135 up to 4.2A unless tail cap resistance mod is done. Here both tail cap had the the “resistance mod”,
basically solder a copper braid solder wick that connects top of the spring to bottom.
It’s hard to see the copper braid on the baby elephant tail cap spring, but it’s there

Both light has pretty amazing output & throw, the Mag 1D does 63K lux & baby elephant did 65K lux.

This is not done yet, I am getting some sharp razer blade to cut the dome off,
I like the other de-dome thread as slicing the dome & leave a layer behind will keep the protection & possibly raise the throw over 100K lux

Is it just me, or is the head on the “baby elephant” the most awesome thing ever? Looks great man excellent work.

Thanks buddy, that’s some serious kind words

The proportions on this one are superb.

Once again, well done.

When slicing, take your time to do it right and try to finish it with as little slices as possible. Then you can polish it flat with a dremel. Also, don’t use force to push it through because while it will cut through the dome, rather than 100% cutting, it’s more like 70% cutting and 30% pulling it off, which results in an uneven surface left behind which gives it the cloudy look.

Or you can heat up the LED at 4.5A for a few minutes, then try to ‘pull it off with your finger nail’ - I have personally not tried it, but others say it works extremely well.

That’s pretty much a summary of the whole thread (or the useful parts).

Well done. That fluted head lends some class to the whole thing. Very interesting build overall I'd say. Especially with the lux numbers being so high and the head so small. What a "family" of lights that you have there. TY for sharing this.

Thanks guys, the baby elephant is sooooo cute, it’s my fav. mag mod of all time.

Now, as far as dome, I don’t want to de-dome, just want to slice off the dome & leave a a protection behind. I read that whole thread.

I am wondering what would be the results if I slice the side of the dome all around it but leave the top?


With the two alternative dome slicing shown, I am leaning towards baby Elephant 2 for 3 reasones:

1. Leave the top round, light exit from this part forms the spill,
no touching so that no lumen reduction from spill section.

2. slice off the sides so that no more die magnification, thus, smaller hot spot & higher lux than non de-dome, where the die is magnified & thus bigger and less intense.

3. The baby elephant 2 cut, the surface is perpendicular to emission so that minimize internal reflection & reduce lumen loss & thus, increase throw over baby elephant 1

I think this may over come the difference between complete de-dome (more throw, no die protection) vs. slicing off the top (die protection but less throw). Slicing off the top forms the worst internal reflection angles trying to hit the reflector, big loss of lumen will occur, the increase of lux is not any where as good as complete de—dome.

I think the baby elephant 2 is the best method as far as dome re-engineering goes,
reduce die size to increase intensity, minimize loss of lumens by leave the top intact & minimize internal reflection by slicing the side at an angle , all at no sacrifice of dome protection.

What do you guys think? My sharp razer blades are in the mail, anyone wants to try first?

HA! I've thunk about that exact procedure! (Is thunk a word? No! Should have used thought then)

If I read you correctly you want to leave a traffic cone shaped dome with a untouched dome top of a few mm's across right?

But how in the world will you achieve such a cut? I've tried on foam ear plugs for the lack of anything else firm but soft that is disposable and the best result I can get with these are by shaving slices off from the top towards the side. But that still leaves the sides like flat strips meeting at an angle to form a cone. Perhaps you can polish them round with dremel tools. I dont know but for the moment I will not try to cut a dome like that because I do not have the dexterity to pull it off in a even remotely clean way.

That being said I do not doubt that you might have the ability.

I've also though of making the dome top bulge in instead of out. That should decrease the apparent die size instead of enlarging it.

Man I hope you succeed! I'd just love to learn how to pull that off. Good luck!

Perhaps cutting it into a prism shape, with the edge facing straight up, would maintain minimum angles for adequate TIR.

Image is back up now, the image shack hosting kept having conflicts with BLF for some reason.

Now, I won’t be able to cut round cone shape all around, but I can cut 8 or 16 sides, one at a time.

Not wanting to start Knifing the already high 65K lux baby elephant, I tried it on my house mag 1C.

Shown in the photo is a Gold mag 1C with a normal alu. PCB XML T5 Neutral on H22a alu. heat sink, drive 2.8A, with a OP reflector, does 24.6K lux.

Led before dome cut:

After cutting 4 sides, lux went down to 19.1 K lux, what the heck?
I noticed that the cut is not optically clear, my razor must not be very sharp.
So I cut the whole dome off leaving behind 0.5mm layer. Lux went back up to 23.4 K lux

The cut is not optically clear:

Finally, I decided to spread some Norland 61, now it’s optically clear & lux went up further to 26.5K lux.

Cut is finished up with a layer of optically clear Norland 61:

The experiment is a fail, in the end, I ended with marginally increased throw at a loss of lumen. An Epic waste of time that I think I’ll keep the baby elephant as is, not going through dome shaving.

Summary of the results:

  1. Original dome: Ceiling Bounce 69.3 lux Throw: 24.6 Klux
  2. 4 sided cut dome: Ceiling Bounce 63.4 lux Throw: 19.1 Klux
  3. cut dome, 0.5mm left: Ceiling Bounce 54.6 lux Throw: 23.4 Klux
  4. cut dome finished with Norland: Ceiling Bounce 59.6 lux Throw: 26.5 Klux
    Net results: Lumen drop: 14; lux gain: 8

Dang...how'd I miss this one? Excellent job on the mini, Ma_sha! The proportions, size, and shape look fantastic. Nice work on the fluting as well!

I bet the same thing could be done with a mini mag as well...that would look trick to have all three sizes! (Oh look, a big box of extra mm parts )

As for the de-doming...I'm not sure what to tell you there. Seems to be par for the course. Bump in lux for a decrease(greater) in lumens.

You should remove the dome completely. Acetone or gasoline work fine.