Axial lighting headlight

NickBose

Enlightened
Joined
Jun 27, 2006
Messages
317
In certain field, medical for example, you will sometime need to look into a narrow cavity/tube.
Lighting in those case must be axial - in the visual axis. Normal headlight simply would not work.
Axial headlights are quite expensive like the Welch Allyn Lumiview and the Vorotek - in the range of above $1000 to several thousands.
If one doesn't need the magnification, a good light source like the Zebralight Neutral or high CRI would be good enough, provided the light is in the visual axis.
Anyone can suggest an elegant way to wear the Zebralight (or any other headlight) so that it becomes truly axial​ and of course not blocking the view?
 

InTheDark

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Sep 13, 2001
Messages
570
Location
USA
I was going to suggest using a beam splitter, similar to what they use for microscope illumination or an otoscope. Then you would truly have co-axial illumination, where the light rays are following the same path as your vision. But then I looked at the two headlights you mentioned, and they are not truly co-axial illumination, they're just headlamps placed very close to the optical axis. If you could rig a way to wear your zebralight attached to the nose piece of a pair of glasses, seems like you'd have something very similar.
 

Mooreshire

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Jul 22, 2011
Messages
156
Location
Seatte, WA
jjmyz9.jpg

Here's one of my Zebralights held against one of my fiber-optic surgical headlamps (I'm a weirdo who collects headlamps).

I think it might work alright, although the battery tube is a bit chunky over the bridge of your nose which leaves you with a relatively narrow field of (stereo) vision. (Hold a Zebra with its tail-cap against your forehead and the head between your eyes and you'll see what I mean.) Also, all of the professional-grade axial headlamps I've gotten my hands on have very fine angle adjustment, since precise orientation control is apparently important for surgery. The focusing mechanisms have all been very precise too, and Zebras are of course fixed focus. If you can figure out the elegant way to get it mounted up and adjusted properly (and the narrower stereo field and fixed focus isn't an issue), I'd imagine a Zebra would perform better than some of the cheap "LED dental headlamp"s that you can find listed online. I don't know what that elegant solution would be though.
 
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