3000 Lumen Spotlight Build

Hey all, so i had this idea the other week and I've decided to consult the experts for some advice on how to build it and if its even practical. I have a KC slim-light housing lying around with an HID bulb and ballast connected to it. I have been using a giant lead acid 12v battery to power it so it wasn't fun to carry around as a giant spotlight. So ive had an idea to remove the HID bulb and fit in somehow 3 1000lm LED's a driver and make a tub out of pvc pipe for some batteries. fit it all together to resemble the OLight SR90. so my question is, if using 3 LED's do i use 3 drivers or one single driver and how do i wire the LED's series or parallel to the driver? id like to even know if this thing is even practical to build haha. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Some will depend on how hard you want to drive the LEDS, and, what you will do to control the heat.

Another issue will be the KC slim-light reflector not being optimized for throw of the LED's...the LEDS will be a large surface area compared to the depth of the reflector, etc....and for a spot light...you typically want a smaller emitter and a larger reflector, as a concept.

Moving this to Spotlight and HID forum.

Bill

Multiple emitter based builds are not known for throw and are not suitable for spotlight applications. If you want a triple XML there are lots of choices out there, DRY 3 XML, Nitecore TM11, Jetbeam RRT3, Fenix TK70, Xtar S1, Nite etc that range from 69 dollars to about 300. There are customs as well if you look for them. But for spotlight applications, HID both long and short arc would destroy LED based lights.

Sounds like the HID isn't the problem, you need to change the style of battery you're using, I have a large light I modified to HID a few years ago, I replaced the heavy 7Ah gell battery with a 4cell 5Ah Lipo battery designed for model aircraft. I now have longer run time and a battery that weighs about a third the weight of the original.

Norm

dkongkill said:

so my question is, if using 3 LED's do i use 3 drivers or one single driver and how do i wire the LED's series or parallel to the driver? id like to even know if this thing is even practical to build haha. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

either way you can wire leds, cuz there are drivers for either, also depends on battery you using. there few variables.
the most practical way is to wire leds in series, and use single multimode driver, but if you use 1 liion cell, you can wire all in parallel, you dont even need driver, if you don't want multimode, all you'll need 3 resistors.

as for practical or not, it depends a lot more on other things, like the host, reflectors, heatsink (with good heatsinking you can run 3 xml all day long with bad, you'll fry them in 10 min, thus making light not practical at all), and other things,

you can build practical led spotlight, if you use 3 deep large reflectors, like maglite led uses or catapult , it will throw few hundred yards, it has been done.

Thanks for all the replies. i think that Norm is right. i wouldn't mind keeping the HID system in place as long as i had a lighter battery but then if i kept my HID system what is a good small host to put it into along with the ballast? I've seen the huge monster hosts people have used but they are to big for my use.

You may get some ideas here my build, there are similar threads, use the search function to find more.

Norm