selfbuild headlamp 7 x cree xpg r5

hi folks,
in wintertime i often go for a afterwork running trip instead of a bicycle tour so i need a headlamp which is absolutley compfortable to wear on top of my head and that i can also use in my bike. weight was although a point. after building some bicycle lights in the past, some experiences i've made in heat treatment and anodizing i can look at. heat treatment is in my opinion a important point if your light should work well for a long time.

in the past i often use led drivers from taskled and im really satisfied with these driver. in my lamp i used a maxflex driver with 14,8v lipo accu. i used a 7 x xpg r5 led circuit from led tech in germany with a kathod polymer optic.

i've tested the lamp a few time and i can say everything works absolutly well.

so enough words, here the pictures.










cheers christian

Your light is really nice! I love to see home built lights and yours is very well designed and built. Did you do all of the machining yourself?

Joanne

That is awesome looking. How about a beam shot?

Good looking and quality built. Well designed for barlight and headlamp. I thought you have a dimming control. 7 x XPG is really overkill for running.

Wow! Sweet! I want one! That is really nice, you should be proud of that! Like datiLED said, could you let us see some beamshots? How long would the runtime be? What battery you say? A LiPo pack, like you would use in R/C cars?

Very nice.

Have you tried running with it?

It looks a bit wobbly to me.

Still very nice.

hi to everyone,

yes i've machined everything at home. a little tricky was the front plate but with a rotary table it's done in a few minutes. the design of the front plate comes from my considerations to get the housing preferably water resistant. the shape of the polymer optic is a little big special. if you don't made it like mine, you will get some nasty holes on the outer side, like you can see here

http://www.mtb-news.de/forum/showpost.php?p=7606532&postcount=381


i use the maxfles at the uib2 threemode. that's 2 dimming levels and with a longer klick you can switch to a third level. that's perfekt for biking and running. not to much concentration is needed when you use the lamp and if you something to read you can use

at first i use a headbelt from a conventional headlamp, thats to wobbly for running, so i'm looking forward to find a headbelt which was much more stronger. after a few running trips, i can say that the lupine headbelt was a very good choice. for running it's perfect an the cateye mount fits although perfect and is easy to use.

a little probleme i get when i'm anodising the housing. at the last part of sealing i get some chalk inclusions, i think in the future i've to use only distilled water.

170g head weight for a running headlight is not a lightweight, but i've no problems of headaches or something like that when i use it for a longer afterwork runningsession.

head treatment was although an important element if you want a light thats works in all kind of situations. i did some test with maxflex on 1300mAh on highest level (no dimming). only the airsream by running is enough to cool the light down. the heat of the light isn't higher than hand-hot.

with the beamshots i've some problems to get the right camera for some results that are close to reality.

cheers christian