Doug S
Flashlight Enthusiast
Don McLeish kindly has provided me with various McFlood reflectors for photometry testing. Shown in the photo below, left to right are an unmodified EN plated McFlood, a Beadblasted/sanded/polished McFlood [all EN removed exposing aluminum only], and finally on the right a beadblasted only [all EN removed].
Well, it looks like the Image Station folks are not cooperating anymore. Here it is courtesy of Beretta1526 who has hosted it:
I measured the relative performance of these three reflectors using the integrated photometry techniques described in the following post:
DIY photometry
Here are the results, normalized to the stock EN McFlood:
<ul type="square">
Stock: 1.00
Al polished 1.10
Bead Blast 0.84
NX05 1.20
[/list]
I really like the "beam" of the bead blasted sample. It occurred to me that if a McFlood were just painted black it would produce a similar "beam". To see how much the reflected light from the BB surface contributed to the brightness of the beam I compared the raw lux readings with the sensor looking at the source compared against the reading with the bare LED. The BB reading is exactly double the bare LED reading. Here is similar data for all reflectors/optics normalized to the bare LED reading [all are peak readings within the beam]:
<ul type="square">
Bare LED 1.00
Stock 8.9
Al polished 9.0
Bead Blast 2.0
NX05 37
[/list]
Note that in my first dataset that the Al polished performed only 10% better than the EN which is only about half of one luxeon bin grade. Previously I had obtained about 20% gain using reflective Al sheet fabricated to the approximate shape of the McFlood. The difference may be to either the degree of polish or the inherent reflectivity of the particular Al alloy. I don't know which, but I lean weakly towards the degree of polish. The Al sheet that I used previously had been purchased 12 years ago and was selected specifically for it's reflectivity. I suspect if it were possible to texture the surface of a McFlood and then vacuum deposit a reflective aluminum surface, it's performance in terms of total flux output could equal or exceed that of an NX05.
Well, it looks like the Image Station folks are not cooperating anymore. Here it is courtesy of Beretta1526 who has hosted it:
I measured the relative performance of these three reflectors using the integrated photometry techniques described in the following post:
DIY photometry
Here are the results, normalized to the stock EN McFlood:
<ul type="square">
Stock: 1.00
Al polished 1.10
Bead Blast 0.84
NX05 1.20
[/list]
I really like the "beam" of the bead blasted sample. It occurred to me that if a McFlood were just painted black it would produce a similar "beam". To see how much the reflected light from the BB surface contributed to the brightness of the beam I compared the raw lux readings with the sensor looking at the source compared against the reading with the bare LED. The BB reading is exactly double the bare LED reading. Here is similar data for all reflectors/optics normalized to the bare LED reading [all are peak readings within the beam]:
<ul type="square">
Bare LED 1.00
Stock 8.9
Al polished 9.0
Bead Blast 2.0
NX05 37
[/list]
Note that in my first dataset that the Al polished performed only 10% better than the EN which is only about half of one luxeon bin grade. Previously I had obtained about 20% gain using reflective Al sheet fabricated to the approximate shape of the McFlood. The difference may be to either the degree of polish or the inherent reflectivity of the particular Al alloy. I don't know which, but I lean weakly towards the degree of polish. The Al sheet that I used previously had been purchased 12 years ago and was selected specifically for it's reflectivity. I suspect if it were possible to texture the surface of a McFlood and then vacuum deposit a reflective aluminum surface, it's performance in terms of total flux output could equal or exceed that of an NX05.