PROTOTYPE REVISIONS
Revision 1 was designed using a 12” diameter 4” tall cake pan as the chassis. The low cost of the cake pan would have made this project a lot more affordable. However, this design was ultimately scrapped due to the lack of rigidity of the steel used in the pan, which would not protect the expensive mirror very well.
Revision 2 was changed to use 1/4” thick aluminum for both the body tube and the bottom, and was an intermediate stage in the design. In this design the reflector was held in by aluminum rings. To make the rings, two large 12”x12” aluminum sheets would have to be used, which was not very cost effective and would give difficulty in mounting the reflector rigidly while not damaging it.
Revision 3 was the runner-up to the chosen design, and uses a flat carbon fiber sheet to hold the LED in the center. This sheet would have similar rigidity to 1/4” thick aluminum while having less thickness and weight, since the original goal was to make the device only 4” thick. This design was not made due to the extra cost for the carbon fiber, which would cost approximately twice as much as aluminum. Carbon fiber would also increase the complexity of mounting it to the chassis, since holes cannot be drilled into the side due to delamination.
Revision 4 is the design that was chosen to build, and more renders can be found in the following section. This design also focuses the light by adjusting the position of the reflector, rather than the LED block. Due to it’s use of 1/4” aluminum instead of carbon fiber, the total height had to be increased from 4” to 4.25”.
Revision 5 was design to move the LED block up and down for focusing, rather than the reflector. The down side was that the glass would have to be removed every time the light needed to be focused. Mounting the LED cooling block within the arms and securing it also posed additional complications.
This design was made to fit a Turnigy 3S 65C 6000mAh LiPO battery pack, which I own several of and are used for other projects. Having a universal battery I could use for all my projects was appealing, however for this light, the goal was to keep it at around 4” thick, and using this battery added 1” of thickness. Another down side was that it complicated mounting of other internal components such as the reflector, but it also had the benefit that it allowed for a second cooling coil.
The final 7th revision was designed to fit many extra features, such as a built in LiPO charger, AC/DC converter for continuous operation, variable current power supply, and multi-pole switch. Not only would all these features added several hundred dollars to the design, but the thickness would need to increase to 6” which would no longer fit in a backpack for portability. Potential future prototypes will include features like these, however the first prototype will be much more basic.
