Which is the best optics for SST-90?

Hello everybody

I'm new on this forum and need your help.
I have been working on my custom dive light and I also have been reading this forum for a while.
First I wanted to use OSRAM OSTAR but this is discontinued, than I changed to ssc p7, and finally I found the sst-90. But unfortunately can't find optics for it. I found only this one: http://www.ledil.fi/index.php?page=sst-90
It seems to be a little bit small to me. And I think a narrower beem would be better.

Could you offer other reflectors for this led?
Which is the best according to your experiences?

Thanks in advance.



ps.: Have a good dive, and sorry because of my bad english.

sitto said:

Hello everybody

I'm new on this forum and need your help.
I have been working on my custom dive light and I also have been reading this forum for a while.
First I wanted to use OSRAM OSTAR but this is discontinued, than I changed to ssc p7, and finally I found the sst-90. But unfortunately can't find optics for it. I found only this one: http://www.ledil.fi/index.php?page=sst-90
It seems to be a little bit small to me. And I think a narrower beem would be better.

Could you offer other reflectors for this led?
Which is the best according to your experiences?

Thanks in advance.



ps.: Have a good dive, and sorry because of my bad english.

Click to expand...

Have tried many reflectors and they all flood. Packhorse uses aspherics with good results, but it's just basically a spot with no sidespill.

I only tried collimators and reflectors with the propose of flood, never narrow beams.

If you found that the Ledil is too small you can try to buy a bigger reflectors for other led's and open they base and test until you find one that suites you, of course you will destroy them and probably won't find a good compromise.

I'm thinking about to use a maglite reflector:
http://www3.shopping.com/xPO-MagLite_Maglite_Reflector_D_C_108_036
and of course open it's hole to fit to the led.
What do you think about it?

The SST-90 is a large LED, so you would need a very large and deep reflector to get throw (narrow beam). With something the size of a Mag reflector, all you would get would be flood.

Thank you for the answers, they helped a lot.
At the moment it seems to me that an aspherical lens could be the solution. With this I can reach wide and tight beam, depending on the position of the led.
I wrote before I would like to use it in a dive light. Where can I buy reletive thick plastic (not glass!!) aspherical lenses which fits to the sst-90?
I was looking for it on the net, but I haven't found any.

sitto said:

Thank you for the answers, they helped a lot.
At the moment it seems to me that an aspherical lens could be the solution. With this I can reach wide and tight beam, depending on the position of the led.
I wrote before I would like to use it in a dive light. Where can I buy reletive thick plastic (not glass!!) aspherical lenses which fits to the sst-90?
I was looking for it on the net, but I haven't found any.

Click to expand...

You can use a glass aspherical lenses and place a policarbonate in front of it.

If you find a source, let me know.

I think the most difficult part is finding lenses that have a short focal length, be it glass or plastic.
dealextreme and kaidomain have some lenses but without any usefull information other than the diameter.
companies that sell high quality lenses (thorlabs, melles-griot, newport,...) usually don't make the short focal length lenses that we are looking for, and they also are pretty expensive if you only buy a few.

if you find a source that can make custom plastic aspherics based on optical desings (asap, zemax,...), we may be able to achieve something if we design the lens we want, but that is of course not so easy since everybody uses it for different purposes.

Don't know if it could help:

http://www.knightoptical.com/php/browseCategory.php?cat=13&catClr=

i used this one from Deal
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12229

it fits perfect , has a nice throw , Plus a great spill

Packhorse use it with good results:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4558
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/255618
I'm also thinking about to use it.
I have been looking for other aspheric lenses, but I haven't found that I need. It seems to be the best solution at the moment.

jspeybro said:

If you find a source, let me know.

I think the most difficult part is finding lenses that have a short focal length, be it glass or plastic.
dealextreme and kaidomain have some lenses but without any usefull information other than the diameter.
companies that sell high quality lenses (thorlabs, melles-griot, newport,...) usually don't make the short focal length lenses that we are looking for, and they also are pretty expensive if you only buy a few.

if you find a source that can make custom plastic aspherics based on optical desings (asap, zemax,...), we may be able to achieve something if we design the lens we want, but that is of course not so easy since everybody uses it for different purposes.

Click to expand...

I also found it, but this is beconvex. I don't know if it is good for us or no. And the focal length also seems to be a little bit big for me, but I'm not really good at optics.

Any other opinion about this lens?

Tally-ho said:

Don't know if it could help:

http://www.knightoptical.com/php/browseCategory.php?cat=13&catClr=

Click to expand...

What do you think about to combine this aspheric lens http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4558 with this http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12229 reflector?

a combination of a reflector and a lens is likely not going to work very well.

Light that reflects on the reflector will not enter the lens in a correct way for the lens to be able to focus it. A lens works only well for light that is coming from a point source or a parallel beam along the optical axis.

maybe a smaller lens in the middle of the reflector at the right distance from the lens might help focussing the light that is otherwise not hitting the reflector but that's a bit difficult to know in advance.

Johan

Hi

My first and only dive light yet, a '90 star 5700k, I followed the Packhorse recipe, 44mm aspheric, direct driven from Li-Poly battery all moded to be parallel instead of serial cells, with a reed switch witch trigger a circuit that hold on or off the led.

not dived yet, but tested many time in pool.

i think the '90 is overdriven a bit when cells are fresh charget, light feel warm even in pool 11Ah-3.7v of cells

Since the proof of concept is working, i'll make an other or two based on this recipe.

With aspheric you'll get no spill and can get verry narrow spot, or while building, you can set the led closer to get wider beam...

or get the ledil small, if you dont want a squarre patern and some spill

I started to testing aspheric optics, with an ssc p7 (I don't have sst-90 yet, but finally I would like to use that).
I ordered 2 aspheric lens from DX.

The first 44mm:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4558
This has an awful spot, there was a rainbow color ring around it.

The second 50mm:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12834
It has a nice spot, no rainbow color ring.
But unfortunately it is too big. I would like to make a more compact light.
So I would like to use a smaller aspheric.

I found these on KD:
http://kaidomain.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductId=1798
http://kaidomain.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductId=1793
http://kaidomain.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductId=1860

Does anybody have experiences with them?

sitto said:

I started to testing aspheric optics, with an ssc p7 (I don't have sst-90 yet, but finally I would like to use that).
I ordered 2 aspheric lens from DX.

The first 44mm:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4558
This has an awful spot, there was a rainbow color ring around it.

The second 50mm:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12834
It has a nice spot, no rainbow color ring.
But unfortunately it is too big. I would like to make a more compact light.
So I would like to use a smaller aspheric.

I found these on KD:
http://kaidomain.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductId=1798
http://kaidomain.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductId=1793
http://kaidomain.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductId=1860

Does anybody have experiences with them?

Click to expand...

I tested this one

The second 50mm:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12834
It has a nice spot, no rainbow color ring.

The problem is that the spot is square and you have to place it too far, but works.

sitto said:

I'm thinking about to use a maglite reflector:
http://www3.shopping.com/xPO-MagLite_Maglite_Reflector_D_C_108_036
and of course open it's hole to fit to the led.
What do you think about it?

Click to expand...

Little late chiming in here, but if you're still open to a reflector, Mag has a new, deeper reflector for their latest D cell LED lights, and it (with the cam removed) works quite well with SST-90.

Delphinus said:

The problem is that the spot is square.

Click to expand...

:hahaha:

Delphinus said:

I tested this one

The second 50mm:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12834
It has a nice spot, no rainbow color ring.

The problem is that the spot is square and you have to place it too far, but works.

Click to expand...

If the distance between the lens and the led is 15-25 mm, you will get a circular spot.