Yes… That is what I am talking about… I am not talking about expensive xxx$ custom builds I am talking about real commercial available flashlights with glass lenses. But I am pretty sure that B158 could beat professional grade 50mm glass aspheric or if it would not beat it it would surely be very close in performance… And that lens don’t cost more than 2$!
Don’t be conservative scientist. Just order B158 and admire to superb plastic lenses (I am not kidding you )
So yes it is very possible that plastic beats glass aspheric lenses. I would really like that you test mentioned B158 lens once when you will have time.
I don’t care about “real commercial flashlights” with crappy chinese lenses, those are completely irrelevant to the projects I build.
As I already said, a good plastic lens with a proper asphere will definitely beat a cheap chinese glass lens without a proper asphere.
.
The lenses I am talking about are professional grade glass lenses from companies like edmund optics or thorlabs or knight optical.
These companies make REAL aspheric lenses, not just the “sort-of-aspherical” lenses that chinese manufacturers make.
You will never beat a properly made glass lens with a plastic lens, physics simply don’t work that way.
What you’re basically saying is that “oh this good quality Honda civic can go faster than a ferrari” well yeah obviously it can if the ferrari has no engine in it.
That’s simply not a fair comparison.
No professional instruments or telescopes or satellites are made using plastic lenses, because they are worse in almost every way.
If you can afford a properly made glass lens, there is absolutely no reason to use a plastic one.
The benefits of a plastic one are simply
-faster to mass produce
-cheaper to mass produce
.
Neither of these two things apply to a one-off project.
Making one custom piece of a plastic lens will end up being more expensive than glass and have worse properties.
What 500$ for comparison 50mm high quality glass lens? I mean really
We build flashlights and not space ships?
Mr. Enderman I just wanted to point that plastic lenses and especially that plastic B158 lens is better than any commercial available flashlight aspherical glass lens in same size… And since it is capable to beat them all for 30% than same style lenses in 300mm size could perform equally well? I think that I saw some china lens factory which can make molds by customer design.
I thought you could get cheaper but good performing plastic lens for potential project that may or may not happen.
Those 300mm lenses are not aspherical.
As I said earlier, there is no commercially available aspheric lens over 120mm.
I’ve already asked for quotes on custom 150mm aspheric lenses from chinese manufacturers and they are all close to $1k USD.
A 300mm one would be closer to 10k probably.
I also explained why a plastic lens would not be cheaper than a glass lens.
Plastic lenses are good for mass production.
You make a single precision mold and then inject the acrylic or plastic material into it to produce thousands of near-identical samples at a low cost each.
The mold itself costs thousands of dollars and would be a dumb thing to make if you’re only producing 1 lens because the cost is not spread over thousands of parts.
Once I was dealing with certain China factory. I wanted unique ODM flashlight. That company wanted 500 moq for my ODM light. I said Ok why not… I will risk 4000-5000$ for that. But I wanted the sample first so they made me sample by my instructions. I did not pay a lot (around 100$ for sample)… They did not made it as it supposed to be(thin material, and finish was scary). I argued with manager or ceo and he did not want to deal with me any more. After that I just decided to mod stuff.
But you see maybe you could negotiate something with certain company even for one sample?
Anyway for 5000 $ you could get 500 unique flashlights with your design, and it is just unbelievable that one quality glass lens can cost more than that but of course I trust you if you say so cause you are in higher modding class than we mare mortals with those cheap budged China lights :+1:
I am not planning to mass produce a flashlight.
That would take far more time and resources than I have.
Yes, for a mass produced light then a plastic lens would definitely be a better option for cost because you can get far more repeatability and consistency on the quality from a chinese manufacturer.
For a one-off build, it would cost about the same and have lower quality compared to a precision glass lens.
Also, as the light source gets smaller the accuracy of the asphere becomes even more important.
.
For example the first Syniosbeam I built with the black flat should have had closer to 12-13Mcd but got less than 10 because the die was so small and imperfections in the electroformed reflector made it impossible to focus perfectly. That’s why the CFT90 version, even though it has lower LED intensity, got higher lux than the black flat because the die is larger and made reflector imperfections less important.
The next light I am planning to build is not LED, and it will require a lens surface to be very accurate.
Maybe even more than my optolife lenses are, which is why I will likely be buying a custom lens instead.
You can already see in the beamshots what happens if you don’t use a proper aspheric lens:
You get an “hour glass” looking beam that kinda converges and then diverges, if it was an asphere the spot size at the target would be smaller and sharper.
Also, scroll down to the part about injection molding and different types of aspheres, it tells you the pros and cons of plastic lenses.
This is what I am looking for:
“Precision Polished: Ideal for prototypes or low to mid-volume requirements because of short lead times and low tooling costs. Also ideal for the highest performance requirements.”
Congrats on a well-executed project, the record, and a beast of a light :+1: It’s always fun to follow something way out of the box, especially when they deliver on both performance and design.
As for the small reflector imperfection you mention, was it identical on both reflectors?
Enderman, how are you so sure about the reasons for the lack of performance with the black flat? There are a lot of things you could have done to improve it.
Good thing with halogens and incandescents is their efficiency increases by overdriving them, inversely to what happens with leds. By the time you feed 260V into that bulb it may have already broken the 1 million lumens of output mark… ( ͡ᵔ ͜ʖ ͡ᵔ)
Don't know what sort of intensity but given the massive output shouldn't be bad I believe LMAO!
Thanks I really wanted to try this recoil idea which had never really been done on this large scale using LED.
As for the imperfection, no it was not the same, it’s just that the reflectors are very delicate so any amount of pressure on them deforms them.
Unfortunately the glass parabolic reflectors I found on ebay were a different focal length and I couldn’t adapt my design to use those instead (glass is a lot more rigid) since I had already designed and started building the light when those reflectors appeared on ebay.
.
Because I had a tube pinched between the reflector and the flashlight body for several weeks or months.
I originally though it was ok, but the 1/4” tube in a 3/16 gap was enough to deform the reflector.
I could tell because it did not give me a nice square spot no matter how I tried to focus it.
Also, it was obvious the reflector was slightly deformed when I tried to use my collimation method (in that older topic I made about collimating lenses) but could never get the 3 projected images in a perfect triangular pattern even with the 3 point focusing.
.
With the second syniosbeam, with the CFT90, I redesigned the cooling system so that no tubes or wires were near the reflector to avoid distorting it.
I get a much more square projection, and focusing it was also a lot better.
There is one imperfection though, I’m not sure if it was there from the beginning or if I did it myself, but there is a small beam of light coming off at a slight angle from the main beam.
I couldn’t find the cause by looking at the mirror, and there were no wires or tubes applying pressure anywhere, so idk where it came from.
The lesson learnt is that these electroformed reflectors are delicate in a different way than glass, they are much more resistant to shattering or vibration damage but they deform with very little pressure.
That is new LEP Maxtoch beam? Anyway it looks really really cool imho, and 1.5MCD in such small, hand held flashlight size is super accomplishment.
Not by your strict standards of course and for your unique modds but really my hat down for Maxtoch for bringing such technology to mare mortals at acceptable price
I don’t think we could buy Enderfire(your) flashlights below 2000$ right? :cowboy_hat_face:
)
