Steve K
Flashlight Enthusiast
I've used copper mounts for LEDs before....
For the project shown, it was overkill, but kinda fun to play with.
I haven't opened up a B&M light, so I don't have experience with how good or bad the heatsinking is. I've generally assumed that I'd have to improve it, but if I have a choice, I'd like to get one that requires less hacking up. The newer the light, the better, I'm assuming.
I agree that to avoid damaging the quality of the beam, I'll want to keep the optical characteristics of the LED as unchanged as possible. If improvements to the heatsinking permit that, then that's a good path to take. The worst-case scenario is that I cook the original LED, which means that I change to something bigger, which was always one of the options. I may want to include the option of adding some thermal instrumentation of the LED, just to get an idea of how hot it is running.
For the project shown, it was overkill, but kinda fun to play with.
I haven't opened up a B&M light, so I don't have experience with how good or bad the heatsinking is. I've generally assumed that I'd have to improve it, but if I have a choice, I'd like to get one that requires less hacking up. The newer the light, the better, I'm assuming.
I agree that to avoid damaging the quality of the beam, I'll want to keep the optical characteristics of the LED as unchanged as possible. If improvements to the heatsinking permit that, then that's a good path to take. The worst-case scenario is that I cook the original LED, which means that I change to something bigger, which was always one of the options. I may want to include the option of adding some thermal instrumentation of the LED, just to get an idea of how hot it is running.