I suspect a well-designed recoil thrower could produce similar throw to an aspheric with wavien collar. It might even be more since unlike with an aspheric, with a recoil thrower almost all of the LED’s output goes into the spot beam. Disadvantage is recoil throwers require a specialized reflector and heat management is difficult.
I don’t think anyone has attempted to make a high-quality recoil thrower. Perhaps the heat issue could be solved by having the arm the LED is mounted on made of solid copper.
thanks Koppel knife works and firelight 2, I have limited data (satellite )and when I get service I have to just glance quickly so it very hard to read everything or even respond proof read or edit so thanks for the information
MEM would be the guy to give a definitive answer about whether a recoil design can be as efficient, but my gut is telling me no. Too much of the lens area would be blocked by the heatsink for an LED running at comparable amperage. The whole point of a well designed RA system is that ALL the light is hitting the lens, any light that would have been wasted is redirected at the LED, increasing its surface intensity and only allowing light to escape that’s at the right angle to hit the lens.
Actually the idea is to have the heatsink on the outside of the head like other lights. The only thing blocking the beam would be the arm with the LED on it. All the recoil throwers I’ve seen advertised are pretty old and were designed with low-power emitters like XPE and XRE in mind. I think a recoil thrower might be able to handle a higher power emitter (perhaps an XPL HI) if the arm was made of copper instead of aluminum.
No new design has been attempted since the crudely made XR-E recoil thrower of seven years ago, while new developements make way better designs possible: heatsinking the led of a recoil thrower is easy enough without it blocking much light. And nowadays we are helped with smaller leds than the XR-E and with DTP, the temperature of the ledmount is allowed much higher, so heat shedding goes faster.
I do not know which type of flashlight is best for throw, but I do know that a recoil thrower can be made better than the old cheap XR-E thrower that is the only actual recoil thrower I know.
I thought you made a joke that you got all collars … now i want to meet you in a dark street even more
I am still not conviced about an application in a flashlight but i can imagine what you mean in some way. Something like BMW’s laserlight could perhaps produce similar results but are quite not practical in a flashlight.
Unfortunately, I don’t carry small collars around in a trench coat pocket for protection on dark streets.
It’s a good thing the flashlight industry doesn’t check in with Kenjii to see when he’s “convinced”, because I’m not sure you know what convinces yourself at this point.
…and the show will go on. No matter who’s convinced. Practical is not the name of the game; it never was. Even BMW knows that.
I cannot answer either one of those questions. That’s simply playing safe. There is much work to do between a few different people before any form of suggested numbers like that will be given.
A recoil thrower will NOT produce the highest kcd per optical displacement volume. In fact, the light would require far greater optical displacement in a recoil setup to get even in the same ballpark as a lens setup. The only thing a recoil thrower has going for it, is the ability to use a mirror that can be made more cheaply than a lens of the same diameter when the diameter gets large. Even then, critical output area is lost if an RA is attempted in a recoil setup. I see no way for it to be the answer using traditional methods. If you were using an arc lamp with water cooling, I might become interested. If you didn’t mind a non-standard body, you could obtain a telescope mirror, but those are very long focal length. I see no advantage under 150mm head diameter with an LED on the spyder. It still wouldn’t beat a 150mm lensed light, though. It would be interesting for being different. There would be a possible way to boost the lux if two mirrors were used. However, that increases the cost once again, and it still will not boost output as high as an RA will in a smaller setup with much heavier cooling ability. Sorry to say this is the truth.
Companies fail or succeed for a number of reasons, but in the realm of a small-market specialty there is almost never quite enough profit to keep going unless you’ve got something else more mainstream to sustain the whole business. With things requiring precision fitting you almost have to offer that service and execute it very well to show the possibilities are there if done correctly, or the bunglers will bash you and your product into oblivion when they can’t make it work themself.
Like the Noctigon Meteor, you can make something everyone would love to have but relatively few will buy because of the price point; most of us have to justify something’s worth to us before we pull the trigger on a purchase; most of us have a very limited budget; and most of us are happy with 95% at a great price versus 100% at twice the price. The last few percent is the hardest to get and costs the most so the market is self-limiting even before manufacture starts and won’t get any better in time. But the Noctigon Meteor is still around even if production is somewhat limited so everyone benefits.
I know a specialty manufacturer of parts for a gun no longer in production but which has a dedicated following. His stuff is the very best, highly desired, and compared to a factory part of lesser stature insanely cheap. He makes his products in small batches to keep his costs down and because this is not his primary income he can’t dedicate any more time to it. He can do this because all patents and design rights that matter have expired or died with the original company. His work is a labor of love that breaks even so he can continue it- I see this same thing here with MEM and I encourage it :bigsmile: It is only those who push the limits that create success, and it is only those who love the challenge that push the limits. Even if I can’t afford to buy any of this stuff, the technology benefits me as it creates a benchmark for all others to be compared to, it shows the possibilities, and you can have it if you want it.
For whatever reason, Waiven failed to keep the doors open. If they want to play ‘patent troll’ they can, but unless they plan a restart that would simply extend the misery of their business failure forcing them to spend time and money they might better use finding their success elsewhere, and cost everyone else the opportunity to do and be more. Plus we all know how Chinese manufacture goes, so as Waiven succeeded against one counterfeiter ten more would pop up in their place and if there was a financial payoff it would not be enough to make the protection effort worthwhile. For our sake I hope they would simply offer a license on the cheap so that they and us can benefit from their past efforts with the counterfeiters finding it better to play along than to have to keep re-shuffling their process to stay one step ahead of trouble.
As hard as the needed perfection here would be to attain, the ensuing market would filter itself out quickly and leave us a few cheap worthless options and one or two very good people doing it as much for the love of it as for the possible profit. I hate to see any small business fail, but that is the usual path to eventual success- something I have experienced myself many times over to get to the modest success my business gives me today. I’m happy and so are my customers.
tl,dr version: Encourage the dreams and the dreamers for they are always the path forward.
Some patent troll company will buy Wavien’s patents during liquidation and then do the dirty work of going after alleged infringers… it’s what patent troll companies are for.
