So guys I have this massive 9.75in aluminum quartz reflector that has been laying around for a few years. Some of you may remember my thread from a few years ago Building a short arc searclight and I had originally intended to build a 1000watt HTI searchlight with it( and currently I have the bulb and ballast here on my desk) but cooling became a huge issue and one that eventually lead to the demise of the project. Basicly I couldn’t find an effective way to cool the bulb without using a ridiculously huge housing that would be super unwieldly.
Anyway I still want to put this reflector to use and decided to get you guys imput on what kind of bulb I should use. I had been leaning towards using the Philips DL50 fatboy D2S HID bulb and over driving it to 75 or 80 watts. Should be good for about 8-9000 lumens with massive throw. I have measured 2.4million lux with a 35watt automotive HID bulb in this reflector, and that wasn’t even properly focused, so a well focused 80watt HID should deliver so pretty impressive intensity.
I had also recently heard about the Luminus CFT 90 led and was thinking about using it. As big as this reflector and any housing I would have to make for it would be, cooling a small LED like it with fans would no problem, and with active cooling I could probably overdrive the bulb by quite a lot.
Most of my research has been done on the HID side of things but its starting to look like LED is quickly catching up. I’m not very familiar with the intricate workings of LED’s and whatnot so I’m kinda looking for some guidance/ideas here. Is there a better LED than an overdriven CFT-90? Would a XHP 70.2 work better in this size reflector? Or should I just stick with what I know and go with a 80watt HID bulb? My goal is maximum thow with a ton of output. I don’t care about active cooling as that wont be a problem so long as we are staying well under 1000watts LOL.
Put a short arc bulb in it like polar-li on CPF has done on similar reflectors.
Something like a p-vip or similar, 10-20k lumens and tens of millions of candela.
Those are the perfect candidate for my reflector but my electronics skills are nearly no-existant LOL. Tricking the ballast to allow the bulb to come on is beyond my skill level. I’ve tried to find the power requirements for the UHP bulbs themselves but so far I have had no luck. If they are the same or nearly the same as a metal halide of short arc lamp then I could use one of those ballast instead.
I have been really tempted to go this right over HID as the power requirements and cooling would be a lot easier. Are there any other LEDs out there that anyone knows of that would be better than the CFT-90?
I just tried an XP-G inside it tonight and it works perfectly fine. Can focus it down to a super tight spot. Should work great with a CFT 90 or any bulb with super high luminance.
Thats what I was considering with the Philips DL50 fatboy bulb and a 85watt ballast. That ballast in the link may be 100watts input, but ouput is probably around 80watts or so.
A car HID would probably explode at 200watts haha! Even the DL50 Fatboy (which is essentially a beefed up D2S automotive bulb from my understanding) can’t reliably be driven over about 80-85 watts. To go above that wattage you’ll have to go with a high/low bay style HID bulb, or go an entirely different route like short arc or UHP or something.
If I can find the exact specifications for some of the UHP lamps, and assuming they have the same specs as high/low bay style HID bulbs, I could potentially use a normal HID ballast to power the UHP lamp, and not have to worry above hacking into a dedicated UHP ballast.
So I think its starting to be a toss up between CFT-90, UHP, and 80watt HID. UHP would produce much more spectacular results but is also a lot more difficult to work with and the electronics portion may be beyond my skill level, if a normal HID ballast won’t work. The CFT-90 would produce a very impressive beam for an LED light, and would be quite easy to work with, but wouldn’t be as awesome as the UHP lamp. The 80watt HID bulb would be awesome too and would probably beat the CFT-90 and be just as easy to work with. The 80watt HID is starting to look like its winning out but what you guys think?
The UHPs will get WAY MORE throw! They can have 10-times the luminance (luminance together with the front surface area of the reflector is what determines throw).
The CFT-90 will require a very large heatsink or active cooling if you want to run it at 40A.
You can’t use UHP bulbs with other ballasts. You could start by just getting such a bulb into the reflector and getting it focussed properly by running thre ballast off the wall socket for the time being.
Polar_Li over on CPF can help will all the little details. He built multiple UHP-based lights in the last few years.
UHP it is then! I have a feeling the CFT-90 wouldn’t be utilizing this reflector to its full potential. I’m leaning towards using the Osram P-VIP 180/0.8. It produces 8400 lumens and has a .8mm arc gap. I have not found a UHP lamp with a smaller arc gap yet.
I don’t know if I ever told you guys this or not but I bought this reflector from Ma_sha1. SOLD. Short arc spot light reflector That is the same guy on CPF who built the The Swan Blaster 260W UHP spotlight using this exact reflector. He got some impressive numbers with this reflector. I’m just a rookie so I doubt I will reach his level but I think I should get some good results non the less with a 180 watt UHP lamp.
I knew from your last thread and I also followed ma_sha1’s progress back then. Seeing him go was kind of sad. He did so many cool projects.
I think there is a 230W bulb with 0.8 or 0.9mm arc gap, it might have the highest luminance. The 350-400W ones are probably the most impressive though. What should definitely be considered is how much forced cooling you will need and how quiet you want the light to be.
Also, in general, how portable do you want the light to be? I think portability is really one if the key things that keeps lights interesting.
I wasn’t into lighting back when ma-sha1 was modding lights but he did make some impressive lights. Always sad to lose such talent.
As far as cooling goes I don’t want to use too high power of a bulb that requires a lot of cooling. Thats why the 1000watt HTI lamp I was originally gonna use didnt work out. Man the heat from that light could be felt from almost 5ft away lol! I really haven’t worked out a suitable housing or anything for the light yet but I’m thinking a small fan to blow over the base of the light and maybe another small one to pull cool air into the housing would be sufficient. When the bulb is in the stock UHP reflector there is no air blowing directly on the glass envelope itself so I don’t see why I would need it here.
As far as size, I really don’t see how I can make it a light that can be carried around. I mean the reflector alone is as tall as the Maxabeam and 2.5x as wide. And the Maxabeam is already a big light on its on. Once the ballast and power supply are added along with the rest of the housing to hold all this I really don’t see it being exactly portable. I envision something maybe the size of a small portable 3 drawer tool box. Something you can carry but when you get it where you want it you’ll have to set it down. I definitely want it powered off batteries though so that I won’t have to lug a generator or power cord around with me all the time. Its gonna be all self contained.
Ok, so you do want batteries. What kind of runtime you want? A 400W bulb could make the battery very large, although since you were thinking about a 1000W bulb it’s probably not a problem for you?
