How to make a 50W HID from scratch - any info anyone???

So I think the 10W Mag HID and mini HID is a great invention and I take my hat off to it's parent's but I'm starting to get over the whole buy a m*glite, chuck half of it away, bore it, cut it, gut it and stuff it and there's your highly compromised superlight.

I want to build a host for a tubular torch style HID light that will accomodate anything from 10w to 50w.
How hard can it be?
It's just some threaded aluminium tube, reflector, lens, head, batteries and a few other electrical bits right?
I want it to run on NiMH cells so it will be cheaper to build & charge.

Here's the major problem - I don't know anything about HID lights. I think that's a problem you can all help me with however.

Can someone give me the run down - let's focusing on a 50W system.
What type of bulb do I need, what voltage & current would it run at?
Could I just get an automotive type "plug & play" kit & house it all in somehow?
What capacity would the batteries have to be to supply 2hrs run time?
Do you need heavy guage metal reflectors and heat resistent glass lenses like with Incan hotwires or does put out HID less heat?
Would a Carley 2101/2103 reflector work ok?

Modamag made one from scratch but it's not a very simple or inexpensive project to say the least, this one turned out to be a work of art Project "Le Beau"

Later
Kelly

The limiting thing with tubular HID lights is the ballast, which is the electronic circuity required to operate HID bulbs. The ballasts required to operate any bulbs larger than 10W are too big to fit into a thin tube which is why all large HIDs are either lantern style or tubular style with a big bulge at the end or before to the reflector.

You can't just "plug and play" HID bulbs. The bulb needs the correct ballast to run, and the ballast can only operate the one bulb.

HIDs produce less heat than incans, but they still produce a decent amount of heat (50 watts is 50 watts). It's the wattage, not the lumens, that matters. So make sure the reflector can handle whatever wattage your using.

For a 50W HID system you will need a 50W ballast (the most expensive part) and a 35W D2S automotive bulb (preferably a Philips 85122 or Osram brand bulb). The 50W ballasts overdrives the bulb. www.AELight.com and www.xenlight.com makes a 50W ballast, and you can get a 85122 Philips bulb from www.HIDPlanet.com.

For 2 hours runtime will need more than 100Wh of battery capacity which is quite a lot, you won't fit it into a small tubular host. If you're using a 12 cell 14.4V NiMH battery pack you will be drawing around 4 -5 amps, so you will need at least a 10 amp hour, 14.4V pack for 2 hours runtime. That would be 12 NiMH D cells in series (12D Mag anyone?) Only practical option would be Li-ion, but even then the battery will still be quite large. The additional cost of Li-ion isn't very significant compared to the cost of the ballast and bulb.

missionaryman,

You and I are on the same wavelength here, I too have a clean sheet 50W design as a total "dream light", Modamags LeBeau is the template that most resembles it. Unfortunate that LeBeau will be so limited in number, it is a truly phenominal design and incorporates what I want in a custom handheld: 50W D2S, LiIon rechargeable power plant, compact size, reasonable weight, devastating machined looks.

I currently have a host with 128Wh of rechargeable LiIon capacity, 16 18650s - 4 in a row, 4 long, looking for a custom ballast to make the whole thing work. Forget about NiMH. For serious runtime the only practical size is afforded by the superior energy density of LiIon. Mine is the size of a 4D Mag, but this is only the alpha version of the powerplant and will have compact shorter run configurations possible. It uses a modular system of interchangeable battery tubes of differing length. I targeted a minimum 2 hour runtime at full output as a goal, and will downsize from there and likely incorporate a two level setup so a very potent 2D Mag size option is possible.

AELight will not sell to individuals, only manufacturers. Good news is XeVision is active here on CPF, so we have a tremendous asset in an HID manufacturer in direct communication here thats receptive to our ideas. They recently posted about breakthroughs in R&D for miniaturization of ballast components, so a cylindrical compact ballast may be obtainable in the (near) future. Rayzorbeam is another HID manufacturer plugged into CPF. Their Rayzorlite is the closest thing to my dream light in production. As impressive as it is, there really are no custom offerings that can compare to it besides LeBeau as far as I know. I envision a bizarre genetic cross breeding between a Rayzorlite and a McLux T (Ti) for aesthetics.

The ballast is always the stumbling block because largely they have been rectangular in shape. CPF's Fivemega had a really novel prototype 24W Welch Allyn HID light that didnt get off the ground as a build for lack of interest, a shame because it is a great concept. It resembled an oversized Mag that swallowed a blackboard eraser (not really) and that is the basis for my host.

50 Watts is just that: 50 Watts of electrical power to do work, not heat. Heat is a function of the method used to generate the light. The spectral response of differing light sources results in very different heat generation characteristics. Incandescent for example has a huge amount of infrared energy in its output spectrum, also heavily weighted on the red end of visible light. So incan produces a tremendous amount of heat for a given electrical drive level, resulting from heating that brave little piece of tungsten to near its melting point. HID produces significant heat within the arc chamber and electrode ends, but I believe the overall direct heat is less than incan. Also, HID produces much less infrared emission so radiated heat is significantly less. Plug in an expert to quantify the exact details. Or put your hand an inch away from an Acro x990 and Mag85 (Welch Allyn 1185 bulb, about 35W IIRC) lens and see which one feels "warmer".

I hope to see some of the tremendous talent here on CPF embrace the custom HID concept and turn out more lights like LeBeau...

If anyone finds a round ballast thats of reasonable size let me know. I'll be the first to purchase one and have a light up an running My dream light is also a 35/50 watt mag 2d size light with a 3"-3.5" head.


As for this comment

"but I'm starting to get over the whole buy a m*glite, chuck half of it away, bore it, cut it, gut it and stuff it and there's your highly compromised superlight."

With my current maglite mods and cant even tell it was ever a maglite once they come back from the platers. You can find maglites on sale for $15, you can barely buy the aluminum stock for the price of a whole maglite. Just to machine a tailcap on a full manual machine from scratch would take you over an hour..................and for $15 you have a tailcap.......battery tube......and head to work with




Mac

Thanks for the replys - very helpful info.

What I have been working on is a design for a host that will accept most of the known m*g mods for incandescant such as the WA bulbs & the Osram bulbs, I wanted it to handle HID as well but wasn't sure what I was in for.
I originally wanted a 4" reflector and have been speaking to manufacturers about that but it looked like a 3" Carley reflector was going to be easier.

After seeing the 85mm round ballast at xenvision's site I think that I can fit it into the 100mm head and stick with the 4" reflector. Is there a problem with exposing the ballast to the amount of heat that will be circulating in the head?

Also I had originally planned on using IB3800 SC NiMH cells, 24 cells in series/parallel make a 14.4v 7.6AH pack. If cells are set 4 per bank the total length is 260mm.
This sort of thing is why using m*g hosts is so limiting - whether it's NiMH or Lithium cells I will select the tube around the batteries not the other way around.

Does anyone have any input as to the best reflector design for this type of light? I thought of using a cheap spotlight with a metal reflector as the donor and running some tests. Some are so cheap that it would cost less to buy the whole light than just go out & buy a reflector.

Exposing the ballast to the heat from the bulb shouldn't be a problem. The most important thing is making sure that the ballast isn't thermally isolated from the outside world. It needs to have a good thermal connection to the flashlight body. Many ballasts have failed because they aren't attached to anything - they need something (the flashlight body) to act as a heat sink.

If you use SC NiMH cells in backs of four the body will have to be very fat. I really suggest that you use li-ions over NiMHs. When you're spending over $300US for just the ballast and bulb alone it's dumb to skip on the batteries just to save a few bucks. Looking at the price of those cells it would actually be cheaper to use li-ions. For the same spec battery pack made of li-ions you would only need 12 2400mAH 18650 LG li-ion cells at $8.50US each or $102US total vs. 24 x $5.95US or $142US total for the NiMH cells.

I don't know much about what reflectors are available so I can't help you much there. One thing to keep in mind is that the D2S HID bulbs are quite tall so they mightn't fit into smaller reflectors. Another thing is that if you're spending all this money I don't think you should use a crappy reflector out of a cheapo spotlight. Again I don't really know what reflectors are available so I can't recommend any "good" reflectors, but I'm sure others can help you out here.

That_Guy said:

Exposing the ballast to the heat from the bulb shouldn't be a problem. The most important thing is making sure that the ballast isn't thermally isolated from the outside world. It needs to have a good thermal connection to the flashlight body. Many ballasts have failed because they aren't attached to anything - they need something (the flashlight body) to act as a heat sink.

If you use SC NiMH cells in backs of four the body will have to be very fat. I really suggest that you use li-ions over NiMHs. When you're spending over $300US for just the ballast and bulb alone it's dumb to skip on the batteries just to save a few bucks. Looking at the price of those cells it would actually be cheaper to use li-ions. For the same spec battery pack made of li-ions you would only need 12 2400mAH 18650 LG li-ion cells at $8.50US each or $102US total vs. 24 x $5.95US or $142US total for the NiMH cells.

I don't know much about what reflectors are available so I can't help you much there. One thing to keep in mind is that the D2S HID bulbs are quite tall so they mightn't fit into smaller reflectors. Another thing is that if you're spending all this money I don't think you should use a crappy reflector out of a cheapo spotlight. Again I don't really know what reflectors are available so I can't recommend any "good" reflectors, but I'm sure others can help you out here.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that - I had no idea those Li-ions cells were that cheap, are they protected and can they safely be assembled in a holder as a pack and charged as a pack?
Do you know what charger will charge them as a single pack?

Yes they can safely be assembled as a pack but they aren't protected so you will need a protection PCB. www.batteryspace.com sells a PCB but it isn't very good. A li-ion protection PCB should serve two purposes:
-protect the user
-protect the battery

The batteryspace PCB only does the first one by stopping the battery from blowing up. It doesn't protect the battery from harmful over discharge or over charge (it does protect from both of these but the limits are too lax to be effective).

Batteryspace also sell li-ion charges but I don't know how good they are. Li-po charges from the RC world would also work pretty well. There are dozens of different models available and they are generally pretty good and quite cheap. Only draw back is that they need 12VDC to operate.

Batteryspace is indeed a good source of material. They have the LG 2400mAh 18650 LiIon cell for $8.50 and intelligent pack chargers that work extremely well, especially for their price point. My fave is a LiIon pack charger that can be set for 1,2,3, or 4 in series for any pack for around $25, with a great digital battery analyzer that reads amphours, watthours, current and peak charge current, minimum voltage, and others for around $50. Its a solid budget solution to high end RC chargers. There may be more of the (used) FM big body hosts out there. There's room for four 18650 cells across in the big body light, and the 3" head is roomy. I've even thought about buying a $280 complete Acro x990 just for parts: reflector and ballast, but that wouldnt give me 50W or an adaptable head for the reflector.

For those of you who are interested in purchasing a Philips # 85122, D2S, 35W HID and a H4-D2S Alum Adapter, you can purchase them from Ebay Seller integra9006hid

(99.9% Positive Feedback) for $45.00 USD (including shipping to within the US). He sells a lot of the bulbs and adapters (ref: Ebay Item# 8030767675). He accepts Paypal with confirmed address (His paypal acct: [email protected]). You can email him if you have an interest.

FYI

Very good information.

Curtis

Just to chime in on my limited experience.

1. Be prepare to shell out $500-$1500. How much it cost will depends on you "persistent" you are at doing things by yourself.
- The most expensive part is the host, machining cost is ~$60-$200/per hour in the US.
- Ballast and bulb will run you in the ball park of $350 alone.

2. Don't skimp on the batteries. :tsk: It's less than 20% of the total cost. I recommend LiPo over LiIon (currently) due to the high discharge. If you do 2C (cont) and 4.5C (inst) on your LiIon be prepare to replace your batteries often. Just asks the guys who EDC Jill DD. LiPo on the other hand, 10C is the standard while high end ($$$) goes to 25-30C (out this year). Most LiPo are produced in S Korea, the difference is who gets to select the first couple bins. Be sure to include cell balancer lead into the packs.

PROTECTION! CAUTION! PROTECTION!
We can't stress this enough. I almost burned down my garage during testing.
Don't bother getting protected LiIon cells, the current protection is too low for the initial surge. If you can get the protection circuit of Thunderpower or Kokam packs. Alternative is batterystation (I'm currently testing)

If you don't want to put up with the danger then high discharge A/AA/SC will be the route. Your tradeoff is weight & capacity & size vs $$$ & safety.

Use some high current capacity connectors such as Deans, that $5 investment will save you lots of :hairpull: Don't bother with the Tamiya, lots more resistance in those old connectors.

3. Heat is the enemy. Remember you're running this unit at 60+ Watts CONTINUOSLY! With a decent battery (4S2P LiPo) pack you should be able to do 1 hour. Remember USL roasting marshmallow picture, well that could be your palm. That's why LeBeau got so many fins to increase surface area.

4. I truly believe in McGizmo's :tinfoil: philosophy, photon management (the reflector) is the most important part of any lighting apparatus. It defines the beam pattern which defines the light. You can overdrive your bulb 100% but if you're reflector is crappy all those beautiful photons will just stick around the light instead of projecting onto the tree 100' away.

For this size of a light source, you'll need at least 3" (76mm), preferably 4" (101mm) reflector.

The cheapest route is to find of-the-shelf solution e.g. (Carley 2101/2102). The tradeoff is you'll get lots of side spill (sometime it's good).

If you're doing custom, keep the sidewall thin (<0.050"). Yes this contradicts with the thermal dissipation issue I pointed out in #3 but here the reason. Unless you plan to put your ballast at the tail end the light will be top heavy. The primary reason for this is the ballast itself will weight at least 8 oz @ 2" vs 8x18650 batteries which are 1lb spread over 5".

5. Don't worry about bulb life. Unless it's mission critical 500+ hours is plenty. Besides, it's the cheapest part of your system.

6. Finally, the ballast will define the largest cross section of your light. Unless you're pk's :buddies: and got a hold of SF Hellfire partition ballast, you got to accept the fact that your light will be big (at least compared to your pocket EDC). But lumens/oz you're the king!

Now, if you read all of the above and is still determine to make one then you're just as as -> ME <- :shakehead:nana::drunk:

Thanks Jonathan - I think I'll postpone this project to my retirement in 30 years time based on your info, might be a little outa my league for now.


thanks all for the help, I'll give it a flick pass for now.