Wavien collars are SOLD OUT [limited production]

The_Driver1 · 2018-06-17T12:19:21.000Z

Tom Tom:

dmsoule:

I watched Marinebeam’s YouTube video about proper alignment of the collar …

Thanks for that tip. I found that video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXAz-TvPDVA and it is very interesting, a clear explanation of how it works.

I note that Marinebeam used the term “light recycling” in the sense of simply bouncing around the stray light back onto the LED, which is the way I was thinking of it.

Quite how much “light recycling” is occurring due to re-use of the blue portion by re-stimulating the phosphor actually adds to the effect, I wonder. Surely it can only be a second-order effect, not the main reason for the collar ?

The phosphor cannot be re-energised by the light wavelengths that it originally emitted, only by the minority shorter wavelength blue light. That’s how phosphors work, converting shorter wavelengths to longer.

I suggest that the majority of the recycling effect is simply by scattering from the surface of the phosphor, where it’s reflectance and colour (i.e. yellowish) are the important factor.

Nope, it’s the blue light which makes up a substantial part of the spectrum of cool-white LEDs.
When light is converted in such phosphor it’s isotropically scattered. This makes the LED brighter from all angles.

The converted part of the spectrum becomes more pronounced (there is not additional blue light coming from the phosphor when you add the collar).

The Osram Black Flat basically has a polished silicone surface. If the collar were to work just by reflection and scattering it wouldn’t work very well the Black flat. It would be much worse compared to dedomed Cree LEDs which have a rough phosphor surface.

Tom_Tom · 2018-06-17T12:38:44.000Z

The_Driver:

Nope, it’s the blue light which makes up a substantial part of the spectrum of cool-white LEDs.
When light is converted in such phosphor it’s isotropically scattered. This means the converted part of the spectrum becomes more pronounced (there is not additional blue light coming from the phosphor when you add the collar).

Ok, for cool white there will be a greater re-stimulation than warmer tints. But as Marinebeam showed, the majority of the work of the collar is to direct the light through the hole, at the condenser (aspheric), without any being “wasted” simply heating up the inside of the head of the torch. As in a standard zoomie.

I see the collar as mainly performing a pre-collimation function, whilst scooping up stray light from a Lambertian emitter (120 degree cosine function) and recycling it until it can escape in the desired direction.

Tom_Tom · 2018-06-17T12:29:31.000Z

The_Driver:

The Osram Black Flat basically has a polished silicone surface. If the collar were to work just by reflection and scattering it wouldn’t work very well the Black flat. It would be much worse compared to dedomed Cree LEDs which have a rough phosphor surface.

I’m not talking about reflection from a transparent silicone surface, that would be silly, but scattering from the (maybe rough or textured) phosphor lying beneath.

Tom_Tom · 2018-06-17T12:45:37.000Z

Consider, on a standard zoomie you could fix a plain circular aperture in the same place as the hole in the collar and it would have no effect on the output. It is the circular reflecting interior of the collar that “recycles” the off-axis light that makes it so clever.

As a bonus there is the re-stimulation effect, which I’m sure happens, but to what extent I’m not sure.

Tom_Tom · 2018-06-17T13:04:41.000Z

Also consider, another reason why warmer tints are less bright than cooler is because the conversion in the phosphor has an efficiency loss. An LED with no phosphor at-all would be blue, and highly efficient, but of little use to us.

The more you “recycle” (or as I think of it re-stimulate the phosphor) with the escaping blue light, the less efficient the overall process becomes, in the limit if the blue component was totally recycled by re-stimulation, then all you’d have left would be the warm emission from the phosphor. So you might as well just have used a well designed warm LED in the first place.

Tom_Tom · 2018-06-17T13:35:21.000Z

And as Marinebeam elegantly explained, in a standard reflector based torch the on-axis light that doesn’t hit the reflector turns into spill, whereas the hotspot is created by the off-axis light that does hit the reflector.

Meaning if you want a thrower that is practical (with some spill) you might be better looking at extreme reflector designs.

Edit: the deeper the parabolic reflector, the better.

If you want to focus an image of the die with zero spill (wasted ? light), then an aspheric with a collar is the way to go.

The_Driver1 · 2018-06-17T13:19:53.000Z

Tom Tom:

Also consider, another reason why warmer tints are less bright than cooler is because the conversion in the phosphor has an efficiency loss. An LED with no phosphor at-all would be blue, and highly efficient, but of little use to us.

The more you “recycle” (or as I think of it re-stimulate the phosphor) with the escaping blue light, the less efficient the overall process becomes, in the limit if the blue component was totally recycled by re-stimulation, then all you’d have left would be the warm emission from the phosphor. So you might as well just have used a well designed warm LED in the first place.

Only the blue light that the LED emits to the side, is actually used by the collar to increase the converted part going forward in a meaningful way.

The Marinebeam guy is not the first guy I would go to to get real information regarding this… The light he offers doesn’t need the collar to get it’s performance. Adding the collar makes that light way more expensive than it should be.

Tom_Tom · 2018-06-17T13:19:28.000Z

The_Driver:

Only the blue light that the LED emits to the side, is actually used by the collar to increase the converted part going forward.

Of course. But all of the other light from the phosphor that goes sideways is also “recycled” by simple scattering from the surface of the phosphor. No re-stimulation possible for this.

The_Driver1 · 2018-06-17T13:26:30.000Z

Tom Tom:

The_Driver:

Only the blue light that the LED emits to the side, is actually used by the collar to increase the converted part going forward.

Of course. But all of the other light from the phosphor that goes sideways is also “recycled” by simple scattering from the surface of the phosphor. No re-stimulation possible for this.

Which is super inefficient! Most of it will be absorbed and some scattered back into the reflector and then back into the LED… I find it hard to believe that this has a meaningful impact.

You will probably get higher performance by using a collar which only reflects blue light and absorbs the rest of the spectrum. This would keep the phosphor cooler and you might reflect 3-4% more of the blue part.

You could try proving your point by using the collar with a very warm (<3000K) led. I predict a very small gain.

Tom_Tom · 2018-06-17T13:29:00.000Z

The_Driver:

You will probably get higher performance by using a collar which only reflects blue light and absorbs the rest of the spectrum. This would keep the phosphor cooler and youight reflect 3-4% more of the blue part.

You could try proving your point by using the collar with a very warm (<3000K) led.

So let someone make a glass collar with a dichroic mirror coating tuned to the LED blue spectrum, then we might see

The_Driver1 · 2018-06-17T20:25:44.000Z

Thats what mem (he claims to be the inventor the collar) was doing before he disappeared from the forum. He developed a collar v2.0 :D.

I will add some links to this post…

Here men talks about the RGB-ratio of the collars mirror coating and the tint bin of the LED having an effect on the final performance-gain of the collar.

More talk: Wavien ceased operations - #47 by MEM

Here it gets interesting. He talks about boosting the XP-G2 to a luminance that would equate to 2900 lumens if it were this intense without the collar. The actual maximum of the XP-G2 S4 2B (the good old one) is 6A and 1120lm (see koef3s test ). This means that mems “v2.0” collar achieves up to ~160% gain. Thats about 30% more than the Wavien collar (120% gain). I find that believeable.

Here he mentions that collars made out of stainless steel don’t work very well because this material only reflects around 30% of blue wavelengths.

Tom_Tom · 2018-06-17T13:42:15.000Z

The_Driver:

Thats what mem (he claims to be the inventor the collar) was doing before he disappeared from the forum. He developed a collar v2.0 :D.

I will add some links to this post…

So he said, but he burned off a few people, who sent money, with his claims (Dale for one) and never delivered.

The_Driver1 · 2018-06-17T13:47:45.000Z

Tom Tom:

The_Driver:

Thats what mem (he claims to be the inventor the collar) was doing before he disappeared from the forum. He developed a collar v2.0 :D.

I will add some links to this post…

So he said, but he burned off a few people, who sent money, with his claims (Dale for one) and never delivered.

That doesn’t mean they don’t work though. Everything I have read from him makes a lot of sense.

Tom_Tom · 2018-06-17T13:51:32.000Z

Either the collar works primarily by re-cycling the blue using re-stimulation, or mostly by bouncing around all the spectrum and scattering it back.

To make a x2 gain just from the blue (what proportion of it is present in the original LED+ phosphor output ?) surprises me, but I can be convinced, by facts and data.

50 of you have bought them, so hopefully we’ll hear some results.

Isn’t BLF great ?

The_Driver1 · 2018-06-17T14:24:22.000Z

Tom Tom:

Either the collar works primarily by re-cycling the blue using re-stimulation, or mostly by bouncing around all the spectrum and scattering it back.

To make a x2 gain just from the blue (what proportion of it is present in the original LED+ phosphor output ?) surprises me, but I can be convinced, by facts and data.

50 of you have bought them, so hopefully we’ll hear some results.

Isn’t BLF great ?

The collar has the same effect that a blue laser has when shined onto phosphor. A blue laser also makes the tint more yellow/green.

These pics both show an Osram Black Flat. It is running at the same current in both pics. In the pic where it’s brighter, a high-powered blue laser is being shined at it. You can see that the tint of the LED becomes much greener.

Tom_Tom · 2018-06-17T14:31:21.000Z

Now we are back into remote laser-phosphor technology, which works splendidly. With suitable phosphors.

Edit: not just shining a laser at an LED, but with designed remote phosphor pieces (not LEDs). And optics (mainly reflectors) to maximise the output.

Coming to a car to you soon (maybe not in the USA, the regulators are very conservative). But has been lighting up the roads in premium EU cars for a few years now. At a price.

The_Driver1 · 2018-09-03T15:03:14.000Z

Tom Tom:

The more you “recycle” (or as I think of it re-stimulate the phosphor) with the escaping blue light, the less efficient the overall process becomes, in the limit if the blue component was totally recycled by re-stimulation, then all you’d have left would be the warm emission from the phosphor. So you might as well just have used a well designed warm LED in the first place.

A cool-white LEDs phosphor produces yellow-green light, not orange or reddish light. It will never be truly “warm” like an incan. Only a sickly yellow-green which is warmer than standard cool-white, but not “warm”.

Here is a diagram from sma’s test . He measured the tint before and after. The clear shift of this de-domed XP-G2 towards yellow can be seen. It was probably a 6000K variant before de-doming.
“mit Kragen” means with collar:

Enderman · 2018-06-17T21:09:12.000Z

dmsoule:

Enderman, you may want to edit the title of this thread to indicate that these are sold out, unfortunately.

Question for Enderman or anybody: how do you affix this to the flashlight body? I watched Marinebeam’s YouTube video about proper alignment of the collar, but once you figure that out, how does one keep it fixed in place?

I use hot glue but if you want something more permanent maybe use some silicone stuff which is also flexible and shock absorbing.

Tom Tom:

As a bonus there is the re-stimulation effect, which I’m sure happens, but to what extent I’m not sure.

Yeah it’s some combination of blue light adding excitement to the phosphor and white light bouncing off the die and re-scattering.

contactcr · 2018-07-15T16:57:29.000Z

Nothing is assembled but just showing how the collar does seem to fit just fine in a Z1 host

dmsoule · 2018-07-15T17:21:20.000Z

Please report back with your results. I tried my collar in two different lights, one a Z1, and both times my “after” lux was about 30% lower than the “before” measurement. Obviously I aligned it incorrectly since I have no idea what I’m doing lol. But the led looked well centered to me before I held the collar in place with hot glue. The beam looked noticeably dimmer after adding the collar, but otherwise similar in profile.