Introduction and first project. (high powered halogen)

Hello everyone, I have been a laser and laserpointer enthusiast for some years now and recently my interest has started to wane a little bit, so I came up with the idea of building a high powered flashlight. A good friend of mine has been tinkering around with pvc hosts and mr16 bulbs of various wattages and had some pretty good results. After looking around on the internet a bit for different bulbs I came across the osram 5557 from planetbulb.com. The specs are 1000w 28v in a vnsp par64 housing. My plans for this bulb are locating an appropriate host and using a 7s 5ah lipo. I would appreciate any input you guys (the experts) have to offer.

You came to the right place, and I am currently building a similar light... which coincidentally is also my first build.

The light was a somewhat common build years back, referred to as the LarryK14 or LK14 for short. The original used the Q4559x bulb which is a 600w halogen narrow spot bulb which is used across the airline industry on all sizes of airliner as the primary landing light. It is not as bright as the single filament 1000w bulb, but more "practical," efficient, and longer lasting, since it is halogen. There have been many iterations of this light, using similar but different hosts. Check petrevs build for a dual filament 1000w bulb version which has separate filament high/low. Check "the big lights" thread for some relevant build links, including "the sleeper" which was probably among the first builds using the bulb, from 2004. Search for LK14 and Larryk14 and you will find more.

Many hosts will work. Currently on the market there is the Cyclops CYC-S6X which is also sold at Sears by the name "15M Candlepower Rechargeable Halogen Spotlight w/Stand." There is also a light called the "primos 62303" which is sold as a 15 million candlepower spotlight. The Cyclops C18MIL X Colossus will work as well, although the rubber shroud is quite large. This may be desirable if you want to prevent the blinding near field light which is evident in some photos. I believe the rubber shroud is removable and there is a hard plastic shroud underneath but I do not own that exact version of the cyclops. I do own the light used in Petrev's build and you will see the plastic shroud I am referring to in those pics. Perhaps the colossus has a similar, small plastic sub shroud.

Some people use JimmyM's JM-PhD-X1 voltage regulator so as to have constant output and multiple modes, with longer run time from higher voltage packs. With it you could use two 6S packs or even two 8S packs in series.


EDIT: I musn't forget to mention mtbkndad's "My Shootout 4 Shots" thread. It has beam shots of a lot of lights including both the 600w lk14 and a 1000w lk14. You'll see just how bright they are. :twothumbs