Well, I wired it according to the diagram, but I’ve done something wrong. I’ve got a short somewhere. The soldering job is really ugly (tiny soldering pads made it difficult). I’m gonna do it over again tomorrow and hope for better results. I imagine I just have some solder dripping down in the wrong place somewhere, or something like that.
Everything was going well but then I was resoldering the LEDs, and I tapped one dome with the iron. And oddly enough, that was enough to kill it…really wishing I used XP-E2’s, I hear they’re a little more durable than these XT-E’s.
So here I am again, ordering 5x from China. Cause I made the mistake of ordering only one from RapidLED, and well…look how that turned out.
This is turning into the project out of hell 
I also changed up the wiring schematic a little bit, cause it made more sense to me. But that’s neither here nor there.
It looks like this thread will be around for a while ;-)
Sorry to hear of all the trouble, I hope the build will finally succeed with the new leds.
Man, that sucks. Some builds can beat a modder up to the point of wanting to give up modding. Multiemtters are a pain in the arse. It's way easier to solder before connecting to heat sink, but multiemitters are a pain to route wires before the emitter bases are secured.
Great to see this light isn't getting the better of you. Maybe the down time waiting for the new emitters will help you get a good plan of attack in place.
Best wishes and looking forward to you mastering this beast.
This would be one of those mods I think! Seriously It was driving me up a friggin’ wall. Glad to have a little time off from this to work on my TrustFire Z5 Copper Pill mods.
Alright, good news—my 5x Royal Blue XT-E replacements came in! Faster than expected to be honest, but this seller has been good about shipping in the past.
EDIT: I now know this was unnecessary, and I may peel off that coating so I can put the head in modified drill press to lap it smooth!
I had a bit of a brain blast as to what might be causing the problem. When I stripped the anodizing from the flashlight, the bottom of the metaphorical “bucket” no longer had an electrically insulating layer of aluminum oxide on it. Perhaps that there was a voltage leak that allowed the LEDs to be shorted when I tried to connect the individually functional series strings in parallel. I still have much to learn so I don’t know if that makes sense, but I decided to play it safe—I wanted to electrically insulate the emitter plate as it was before to remove that variable. But, I don’t have a way to anodize it. Funnily enough, the solution presented itself to me in yet ANOTHER problem! I had tubes of 2-part Arctic Silver thermal adhesive, and for some reason, the nozzle on one tube broke. I decided to make lemonade out of lemons, mixed some up, and rubbed around a very thin coat around the bucket of the flashlight head. There’s hardly an accumulation—a fraction of a mm most likely. But, it’s enough that there is no longer electrical continuity on the emitter surface, and there was before. I may have solved a problem that I didn’t even really have, but that’s how learning works so I’m okay with it.
To perform this, I obviously removed each individual strand of LEDs. I then realized how much easier it would be to perfectly wire each strand outside of the flashlight, before putting it in the flashlight. That’s how I’m going to do all multi-emitter lights in the future, trying to solder with them 2cm inside the bucket of the flashlight was trying my patience dearly.
I hope to be able to finish this project tonight, I’ll post another update!
If all goes well, I’ll order a sheet of remote phosphor and make the smoothest work light around. Phillips got it right with their remote phosphor bulbs—it’s hard to believe how smooth/natural the output is! And if things go REALLY well, Maybe I’ll convert one of my dad’s work lights to the same style for that wonderful, smooth output that could be nice to have in a shop or garage setting.
I have all the emitters wired up properly, now I just need to glue them to the emitter shelf. I swear to god I will never build a parallel array with these 10mm SinkPads ever again. They tried my patience.
For the moment I don’t have a phosphor panel, only because I’m not sure which one I want, and it’s not economically feasible to order 10 75mm rounds. So I’m going to order a bunch of small squares, test them out, and see what I like. Then order the 75mm round. I should be able to replace the front lens, since some are sandwiched in between glass.
Pics will be up soon
Well…that was short lived. Magic smoke escaped from the light. I just find it too difficult to run reliable parallel arrays on this light, it seems inevitable that at this point I’m going to need a hyperboost driver—it just makes more sense to run it in series.
Now I just have to decide if it’s worth it to me…at thevery least I’m going to have to clean all the adhesive off of these tiny boards, remove the wires, re-adhesive everything down…just a lot of work to be done!
I urge people to read this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3948029/
and this:
Particularly if you are young, or have young people around you when using bright LEDs, both “white” blue-pumped ones and bare blue emitters.
The retinal damage accumulates over time, showing up after months or years. It’s entirely avoidable.
“Photochemical oxidation” is an effect of high energy photons.
Lower-energy photons (yellowish green to red range) do not have enough energy to knock electrons off atoms.
Higher-energy photons (greenish blue-to-violet and higher) do have the energy to knock electrons off atoms. That’s the critical level at which damage starts and there’s a chemical cascade after it’s started.
The market rush to sell “white” LEDs — like the rush into “efficient” CFLs that turned out to be crap for various reasons — is happening despite the known problems.
Thanks for the info Hank. I'll be watching for more studies on this with interest. Luckily, most of us don't use our flashlights for very long. It would be nice to see a followup study using neutral and warm white emitters (as oposed to blue and CW leds) and normal mice (not albinos). I suspect that much less blue light leaks through warm white phosphors.
Rollingstone,
I bet you're considering naming this light the Royal Pain in the A__. Before you tear it apart (if you do), I suggest you determine the cause of the smoke. If its short related, you're probably just as likely to have the same issues going series.
You may have already tried this, but if you haven't give it a shot. Disconnect the LED wires from the driver and make sure that the exposed ends do not touch each other or the flashlight head. Test for continuity between some bare part of the head and each contact pad for each emitter base. If you get continuity, you have found your short. Usually solder making contact with the edge of the emitter's base.
“warm white” is color balance, it means it looks warmer overall, but it doesn’t describe the emission spectrum — worth looking up the spectra if you wonder about this issue. You can see the spike emission from 500nm on down in almost any phosphor light.
Simple search: ledmuseum spectrum
or use that result and click “images” for the pictures.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ledmuseum+spectrum&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Wf5wU4uNGs31oAT-6IDoDQ&ved=0CDsQsAQ&biw=1175&bih=776
This is why “blue blocker” sunglasses are advised for people outdoors a lot; these days people live longer. These cumulative damages show up late, but it’s turned out that the damage starts early in life. People just didn’t live that long, until recent decades, so it didn’t matter.
For enhanced eye risk look at this novel LED:
” This lamp is manufactured using a violet chip (instead of blue), and uses a mix of red, green, and blue phosphors instead of just yellow phosphor.“
I was thinking warm emitters are lower binned because more of the light from the emitter is converted, thus more conversion loss and less blue. Bad guess on my part.
Violet. So around 405nm. Should contain more UV. Must convert better somehow.
We are derailing Rollingstone's thread. Maybe you should create a separate thread on this topic sometime Hank.
Sorry Rollingstone. We resume normal broadcasting.
Ah, no worries!
I’m not quite sure where the smoking is coming from, I need to find my dad’s welding goggles so I can actually look at the emitters. I’m sure it’s a combination of being over driven, poor thermal contact, and low-quality soldering. I think the best approach will be to remove all emitters, clean them w/ rubbing alcohol, lap the head/emitters, and wire them up in series with a new driver.
It will get done, I can assure you of that. But I just need a little break from this light, those 10mm SP’s are giving me nightmares >)
One of my best purchases ever (you may have one already, but just in case you haven't) is a simple cheap led-tester, I have this one:
It works with one led and with leds in series, or whatever, it checks connections and if leds really work, and at 0.5 mA there's no worries for your eyes.
I need me one of those, that would have made this SO much easier!!
I started with blue and royal blue P60 dropins a couple months ago, when I decided to start playing with these phosphors.
“Chromalit” is the product name to look for.
Some discussion and details here: Remote-phosphor technology can deliver a more uniform and attractive light output from LED lamps (MAGAZINE) | LEDs Magazine
(I was looking for fixed lighting, found people making interesting looking designs but who aren’t yet bringing theirs to market, and figured, why not try building some. And the reason I mention blue light issues — the people designing and building these things warned me about taking serious precautions, same as they require for everyone working on their designs, so I passed it on here)
The phosphors are available in quite a variety of shapes and sizes; I think they’re single-source right now:
http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en/optoelectronics/optics-remote-phosphor/525582
Useful page: http://www.digikey.com/en-US/articles/techzone/2013/apr/royal-blue-leds-decoding-the-datasheet
Go to wallyworld and pick up a pair of cheap yellow-lensed protective goggles or shooting shades. Red lensed may work too, but not too common to see red-lensed protective goggles. Would be even better if you could test them in-store, but I do know that i have a pair of yellow-lensed cheap protection goggles, and they block a huge portion of the output of my 445nm laser. The laser is DD, and under 1W of 445nm photons, and it is currently missing in my hoardroom, otherwise I’d test specific models for you. Probably close to the same output of an XT-E royal blue.
Maybe make a quick and dirty xt-e light with some wire, a battery, maybe a resistor, and some tape (paperclips optional) to use as a test source of 445nm photons, to bring with you when goggle-hunting.
Or if you are super serious, you can buy lab-certified and lab-tested laser goggles that are rated for the appropriate wavelength.
Or if you already have a pair of “Blue-Blockers” brand shades, test those for suitability!
Alright, well I’m too excited not to share this.
Before I get to the best news, I’ll start off with the mundane—I ordered 3x Intematix ChromaLit XT remote phosphor panels with a diameter of 75mm. This should be a perfect drop-in fit for this light!
I’m going through the process of stripping the thick layer of thermal adhesive down, turns out that was not the source of my problems. But I’ll be honest, for the thickness of that adhesive layer, it transferred heat remarkably well…so that will give me some nice bare aluminum to work with. There are ridges that were designed to help hold rounds in place (ironically they center the LEDs in between the reflector cutouts…dumb) and I’m going to try and work those down flat with a dremel wheel or a drill press. The stars will be removed, cleaned of all thermal grease, and lapped smooth. I’m doing all this for a very, very good reason!
I got a PM earlier today from Cereal_Killer saying that he would be willing to help me finish up the light! Naturally, I’ve accepted his offer. Once the remote phosphor panels arrive, this will be getting boxed up and shipped off to Cereal_Killer and hopefully there will be no more surprises for this build :bigsmile:
I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on this light, I’ve been following the build since the start. Like I said I’m PM I’m more than happy to do the work just for the shear enjoyment of getting to play with it a few days after it’s together.
I enjoy every light I build, even get excited about a lot of them still but I couldn’t be more stoked about this one! My neighbors on the other hand, probably not so much lol.
That Amazon link posted eariier for the $15 Uvex SCT-Orange UV eyeshades looks ideal.
Oh, and for a sound track, I recommend: Timbuk 3 performing The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades.