Looking for someone to build me a custom flashlight

[SemiMan]

You seriously think the flashlight would hit the $2000 mark? Put it like this, if it did I would not be able to afford it, however I am also unwilling to put down a budget as a lot of people I have dealt with or seen on the net will immediately quote your maximum budget (notably script writers that I have dealt with in the past on sites you need to set a budget on) - I'm not saying anyone here is untrustworthy at all, it's just the way I work. I have also already ruled out HID lights because of the high bulb replacement rate and cost. I like the idea of 50,000 (heck, even 5000 hours) of light. Changing bulb in the middle of a field in pitch black is not fun either... I'm also toeing the water at the moment to see if anyone would be up for building a compact(ish) 3000 lumen led torch

The issue with the HID bulb life is only if you drop it. The bulbs are good for 2-3,000 hours on high. If you run it for one hour every night, that is 8-10 years assuming you work the same number of days as the rest of us. At $50 a bulb, that is pretty cheap. Let's say a customer LED flashlight is going to be $500.... you could find a HID in that price range... you do not need a $2,000 military quality one.

I think you need some more data on the power requirements. The Seoul P7 and the Cree MC-E are both quad die devices. The Seoul is 4 devices in parallel, the Cree is 4 in series. From your standpoint (i.e. I just want to buy a flashlight), it really does not matter. That is for someone else to work out the electronics. However, from a simple standpoint, when you want to get say 700 lumens out of either device (about what they are capable of today ....guarenteed lumens), then you need about 10 watts to get them to that point. Hopefully when the MC-E ships it will be higher than 700. Seouls top bin is higher, but for interests sake, tell yourself you will get about 700 lumens per LED at about 10 watts. If you run 4 of them, you will need 40 watts to power them. Let's assume you can get 85% driver efficiency. That means you will need 47 watts or so to run your LEDs. A single 18650 Lithium can put out about 6-7 watts for an extended period of time without damaging the battery and while still maintaining good battery life. Hence, you could comfortably run your flashlight on 8 of them and I would not feel uncomfortable running it on 6. If you want to keep the size down, you could use A123 cells which comfortably put out much higher currents. You could easily run on 4. So that is what it takes to RUN your flashlight. Now lets look at life. An 18650 battery will have about 6 watt hours of power when it is running the currents you need (give or take 20%). If you have 8 batteries, you have 48 watt hours. 8-18650 batteries will hence run your flashlight flat out for about 1-hour. Go down to 6 and you will get less life of course.

Last thought. Your 500 lumens flashlight that runs on 4 R123s. I am not sure what LEDs are in it, but I pretty much guarentee it is no where near 500 lumens for a full 4 hours. Each R123 has about 2-2.5 watt hours so you have about 8-10 watt hours of batteries in your light. I would hazard to guess that for 500 lumens, you are likely drawing about 5 watts. Hence to actually get 500 lumens, you could only get maybe 2 hours. Depending on the driver, you may be dropping below 500 lumens pretty quick. Perhaps a flashlight that puts out a true 1000 lumens and keeps it there for an extended period of time would be enough.

Semiman

 

[LEDninja]

A 4-D cell maglite with LED bulb, 2. A 500 lumen 3 x cree led torch powered by 4 cr123a batteries (1000mAh, rechargeable), and 3. a 100 lumen cree led torch powered by a single AA battery.

Size: I would like the torch to be about the same size and shape as a 4 D-cell maglite, identical to within ½" if possible so it still fits onto my belt clip.

you - I simply want a torch that will replace my 4 D Cell maglite and give me more than enough light for any situation I find myself in. If you require any more information please feel free to ask me!

Perhaps a flashlight that puts out a true 1000 lumens and keeps it there for an extended period of time would be enough.

I think SemiMan just brought us back to earth.
What is it you wish and what you need?

Need:
Size - A 4D? Maglight (Will a 3D Maglight do?)
Brightness - 500 lumens tolerable? 700? (do you really need 5X that?)
Throw - how far away do you need to see?
Brightness and throw are related but 2 different things. A 100 watt light bulb has over 1000 lumens about 2X-3X your 500 lumen torch. It will light up all 4 walls, the ceiling and the floor. But take it outdoors and it does not light up anything over 30 feet. Even your 'dim' Maglight will give a throw of over 100 feet. Do not ask for ridiculous throw numbers though. Flashlight manufacturers increase throw by making the beam narrower. A 2 inch wide beam is not useful

Wish: Daylight in the middle of the night. But we are not god.

You also forgot to mention the price range you can afford.

For a light that is slightly brighter than your '500 lumen' look at the Elektrolumens 3D P7 light.
Review
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/194716
Check out the outdoor beamshots at the bottom of the 1st post and the 2nd post. Notice how the width of the beam makes a big difference. (The MT-3 is a 3 LED drop in probably the closest to to your '500 lumen' flashlight).
Discussion thread
http://www.cpfmarketplace.com/mp/showthread.php?t=177152
$129.99 Requires 3D high capacity D NiMH (10,000 to 12,000 mAH, those wimpy 2,500 mAh Energizers won't do). Alkalines will work in an emergency but at 1/2 the brightness.
http://www.king-cart.com/cgi-bin/ca...ser-id=&password=&exchange=&exact_match=exact
If you absolutely need a custom 4 cell Wayne will probably build you one with a dummy cell/spacer at extra cost. 4 cells will fry the LED.

For a 4 LED 3000 lumen version I have listed the links in post#16
$499.99
He has currently lowered the price to $399.99 but I do not know how long that will last.
At this time he is offering 2S2P with 6D NiMH or 2 D Li-on. I do not see a problem with 4S configuration and 4 D Li-on. 4 D Li-on + 4 chargers will run you another $100 or more.

animeai
I think you got this thread off the foot by trying to design your own flashlight knowing nothing about flashlight design, and only a little about LEDs and batteries.

Batteries 1st
RCR123A 700 mAh (1000 mAh is just sales talk)
18650 1400 to 2200 mAh
C Li-on 3300 mAh
D Li-on 5000 mAh
Note 18650 is not the highest capacity. Also D Li-on will fit better in a D maglight than cramming 18650s in there.

LEDs
There is really not that much difference between the SSC-P7 and the M-CE other than size and shape. They both have 4 EZ-1000 dies in them.
The SSC-P7 is wired 4P [email protected]>>11W
The M-CE can be wired
4P [email protected]>>11W
2S2P [email protected]>>11W
4S [email protected]>>11W
The M-CE is not 4X better. Every time you lower the amps you need a corresponding increase in volts.

After some head scratching I now see what you are trying to do. Run all 16 Cree dies in series to keep the amps low.
0.75A at 57.6V.

There have been 11 battery explosions in millions of laptops before Sony started the recall.
There have been more than 11 battery explosions within the small CPF community. The biggest cause is not keeping the batteries in multiple cell setups balanced. Keeping 15 cells balanced all the time is a difficult task and whether you go for 15x18650 or 4xD li-on you are holding a very potent pipe bomb.
Reference
http://flashlightreviews.com/features/123burst.htm

 

[Tekno_Cowboy]

I would say that LEDninja and SemiMan pretty much summed it up. I would like to note that the smaller size and assorted wiring possibilities of the MC-E make it more appealing to many for flashlight applications.

animeai:
I did not mean to say that a custom light would cost $2,000. I simply meant to say that you could get a quality HID that will pump out an easy 1000-3500 lumens for the same price or lower. As far as bulb replacement goes, I have yet to replace the bulb in my cheap HID Spotlight, and it's been heavily abused for the last 1.5 years. The HID lights we have at work are treated even worse, and they're even older. They've only had 2 bulb replacements across 10 lights. That's not to say that if you get a cheaply made light and go around beating things with it that it won't konk out on you, but in my experience, they are not as flimsy as you make them out to be.

Oh, and an extra "be careful with li-ions" just for good measure. I intentionally made one vent, and it's not something I would want to happen within several feet of me.

 

[animeai]

I think SemiMan just brought us back to earth.
animeai
I think you got this thread off the foot by trying to design your own flashlight knowing nothing about flashlight design, and only a little about LEDs and batteries.

Well you certainly got that right :laughing: I have no idea about flashlight design, but I really appreciate all the great people here willing to listen to the ramblings of an idiot and offer sound help and advice .

I have a feeling that I'm unlikely to get any kind of quote until the Cree MC-E is actually released and I'm very tempted to order one of Elektro Lumen's P7 conversions as a stop-gap measure. However I am still interested if anyone feels they can build what I really want, but I am a lot more flexible on specification than my first post makes out - the onlt thing I would be rigid on is the size (~3D or ~4D maglite sized) and the lumen output 3000+. The reason I originally specified a 4D size was becasue that is what I have always carried since with stock bulb or standard LED dropin they gave much better light than the 3D. I had also not realised that lithium ion batteries were that prone to explode if you tried to draw too much current - I gues Ni-Mh would be a lot safer? The question that brings up is are three AA cells in parallel better for providing a consistant current that a single D cell?

 

[Tekno_Cowboy]

Generally speaking, I believe that less cells = greater consistency. Contrary to what most people think batteries do not draw evenly across an array. typically the battery in the nearest positive position gets used up faster. Rotating the batteries into the opposite order in the middle of the expected runtime has gotten me slightly improved runtimes and more even wear on the cells. Also the more batteries you have in an array, the more difficult it is to keep it balanced. I could be wrong, if I am someone please correct me, but I'm fairly certain that I'm correct.

animeai, I would suggest reading the threads in the threads of interest sections to gain a better understanding of flashlight concepts. There is a vast wealth of information to be had, if you invest the time to read it.

 

[Jarl]

wahey, just saw this, what a thread
this is similar to a project I'm thinking of, only I'm only going for the 1 emitter.

a 4 die LED on full blast ~10 watts, so you'll need something capable of giving out 50 watts. 1.5C discharge for li-ions is ok, so you should be fine with a total of 6 18650. 2s3p would work, reducing the chance of venting as well, though 3s2p would be more efficient. 4 shark boards in parallel, one for each LED connected to a common potentiometer for brightness control with a master on/off. Problem with a shark is the min output would be still about 300 lumens with all 4 LED's on!


Hmm, wish I had the skills/money to make something like this.... A quad cree heatsink, the four MC-E's (couple of the WW for better colour rendition), mag host, one hell of a lot of solder, etc. Makes my own single MC-E project look like a mini mag! . If you're not bothered stepping down a notch or two in brightness, I could make 3 (planning to make 2 anyway) and sell you one, though it's not nearly the same size as a mag D.

p.s- MC-E's available
as shown here.

 

[shakeylegs]

I decided I wanted an uber lumen light but found runtime to be limited especially on 18650's. AW's C LiIon's pack more amp hours. I settled on the Osram 64447 IRC 65W 12V incand bulb. Lux's bulb test info is here: http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h75/pike444/bulbs/64447-IRC-65W.jpg

Driven at 12 V it produces approx 1700 lumens, while 16V produce about 3500 lumens. Best of all, temps stay at or below 100 degrees F. I'll drive it with 4 26700 emolis, or 4 AW C LiIons, and fivemega's FM3V-2 head. Host would be a 3D or 4D m@g. For more portability and shorter runtime, I'll put FM's head on the Elephant II and drive the osram with 4 18650's.

All that said, I'm doing it mostly for wow factor. A simple P7 puts out more light than I would need in most situations. For under $50, you can buy and ultrafire C2 and mod it with a P7 emitter - it'll fit in your pocket and light up everything ahead. Of course, swinging it at an aggressor might prove futile

 

[Jarl]

Problem with that is very short bulb life.

 

[shakeylegs]

Problem with that is very short bulb life.

4000 hours @ 12 V / 127 hours @ 16V

 

[Jarl]

I like the idea of 50,000 hours or service life from an led

:tinfoil: