fyrstormer
Banned
IN A WORLD
WITHOUT SMDs
ONE MAN
STILL WANTS
LOTS OF LUMENS.
Okay, enough of that silliness. :laughing:WITHOUT SMDs
ONE MAN
STILL WANTS
LOTS OF LUMENS.
First of all, to address the thread title: "Pointless" does not mean "stupid". One of the tenets of Zen Buddhism is that pointlessness means an action is taken purely for the sake of seeing what will happen, rather than trying to achieve a useful productive goal prescribed by best-practices and validated by business metrics. We all need some pointlessness in our lives; that's why we have hobbies.
- - -
I've always felt like high-flux 5mm LEDs never really got a fair shot at the high-end boutique flashlight market. Arrays of 5mm LEDs persist in the dollar-store flashlight market, but they're long gone from any designs people would pay real money for. Pretty much the only high-end flashlight I can think of in the past...8 years?...that used an array of 5mm LEDs is the Peak McKinley, which I was fortunate enough to buy in long-wearing stainless-steel just before it was discontinued.
It's not surprising. After all, the same technological developments that enabled high-flux 5mm LEDs also enabled even-higher-flux surface-mount LEDs, so we flashaholics went with the design that had more potential, and the rest of the market followed-suit. But I've always thought arrays of 5mm LEDs have a certain charm, kind of like the alternate history of highly-advanced Victorian devices in the steampunk genre, so I decided to make a high-powered LEDpunk flashlight.
I always liked the look of the Makai, but I didn't really need a thrower, so I never got one. But this project gave me an excuse to get a Makai, because I could make use of its large rocket-nozzle shaped head. Here's the result:
I know what you're thinking: "Fyrstormer, that's insane! Why would you spend $600 to build a flashlight that isn't state of the art??" Because I got bored, dear reader, and I wanted a new toy. :nana: Next question?
Anyway, here's how I put the thing together:
To start with, I bought a cheap UV flashlight from Amazon, that had an array of 5mm emitters arranged in concentric circles. If there were no other space constraints, a hexagonal pattern would've been a denser array, but since it needs to fit in a round flashlight head, concentric circles is the densest array that will actually use all the available space. The original flashlight had 50-ish LEDs in 4 rings; I de-soldered all the original UV LEDs, used a bunch of de-soldering braid to mop-up the residual solder, cut down the board to remove the outermost ring, carefully sanded the edges until it was precisely 38.7mm diameter so it would fit snugly, widened each and every thru-hole, and soldered sockets into each pair of holes so I can easily replace the LEDs with better ones in the future. (assuming better ones ever get produced, of course.)
The result is something that, to me, looks like it belongs in the Large Hadron Collider as a particle-detector grid, or something like that. I know that's just my pride of craftsmanship speaking, but whatever.
Next, I added a JST power connector on the back of the board so I could unplug the board from the driver if/when I need to disassemble the head in the future. Then I took 29 of the highest-flux white LEDs I've ever seen -- the same 5-die LEDs that PhotonFanatic uses in his Killer AAA keychain lights -- and cut the wire leads so they would fit in the sockets on the board. (at 5 emitter dies per LED, that's a total of 145 emitter dies in this flashlight. I wonder if that's a CPF record? ) Then I plugged in all those LEDs, trimmed-down the alignment mask from the original flashlight to help keep the LEDs from getting tilted during installation, and installed a layer of decorative material on top of the mask to pretty-up everything a bit.
I can hear you now: "Fyrstormer, is that leather? Did you put leather in a flashlight?" Yes I did. I wanted to give this flashlight that extra luxury touch, so I bought a sheet of nice leather on eBay and cut it to fit using a leather punch and heavy-duty scissors. As a bonus, it also does the same job as the O-rings surrounding the original Makai reflector, keeping the assembly snugly in-place inside the head.
I really like the way this whole assembly looks; it's like a layer-cake made of electronics and dead cow.
The last thing to do was install the driver assembly. I used the programmable HiveLD driver that came with the Makai, because why wouldn't I? It's a really good driver. First I removed the XP-L emitter from the MCPCB, in case I want to use it to upgrade one of my older lights at some point. (maybe one of my Jetbeam TC-R2's...but I digress.)
Before installing the driver pill, I pre-twisted the power wires counterclockwise a few turns, so they would un-twist for the first few turns while I was screwing the driver pill into place. That will reduce the likelihood of the wires snapping loose from torsion. If I wanted to do it even better, I would've installed the driver pill before installing the LED assembly, since the LED assembly doesn't need to be screwed into place...but I didn't know if the LED assembly would need modification to fit, so it got installed first this time. As it turns out, the LED assembly fits perfectly into the head with no spacers required to keep it pressed against the glass! I'll take that as a small sign that the universe approved of my idea.
After doing all that work, I was finally able to turn-on the light and see how it looked. Here's what I saw:
I think it's really cool to see all those little wires connecting the 5 emitter dies in each LED to the main power leads. And in case you're wondering, no, it's not on the highest setting. This is brightness setting 2 out of 21, so it's barely bright enough to read a map in the dark -- a proper moonlight mode. I have the HiveLD driver programmed for a max setting of 1.2 amps, which works out to 41.4mA per LED, or 8.28mA per emitter die. I haven't tested its efficiency yet, but it should be pretty good with the power distributed across so many emitter dies, and it's still bright enough to illuminate an entire room by itself.
So what does the beam look like on the highest setting?
Very floody. What we often call a "wall of light" around here. Very different from the original intent of the Makai, but that's fine, because that means I'll actually use it on a regular basis. Where I live, there isn't much need for a thrower anyway. (though I did also get a 6V Makai XM-L, just in case I move to the country someday. )
So there you go, that's my first flashlight project in a long time. I think it lives up to the name of Fyrstormer's Evil Labs.
Last edited: