Building a flashlight- need ideas

Hi all
For this industrial design class I am taking we are to design and build a flashlight. No further specification. (Bet you wished you had assignments like that when you were in school!). I was thinking of maybe 3 high dome white luxeons ( are these out yet?) I was also contemplating a touch-on switch like on those touch lamps. It would burn when held and go off when you let go. I would insulate part of the handle so you can carry it without turning it on. Is this switch method possible? I have access to a machine shop, wood shop, metel shop, and whatevere materials I can find at the local hardware store. I would like to design for AA nimh batts cause that's what I have and would consider a simple step up or down circuit. I have to set my ultimate budget at $100 but I would like to spend less. I can butcher another flashlight for the housing or parts. I may have to do that because I don't know if I am skilled enough to machine a housing out of aluminum or whatever. If I did it would have to be pretty simple. Thaks for any and all advice/ ideas. I have about a month to do this.

Sam

Good luck on your project. I know www.batterysavers.com has some new technolgy but no new designs. The key of the design is to turn the maglite into a faglite. Then you have a design. Q. Are you leaning more to designing the functions, or the over all look an feel? In flashlight design, I think you really need to design both toward a specific target consumer. Pick a target group,(i.e. elderly, tradesman, kids, etc.) and throw a million questions at them. Good luck. Davo!

Davo-

I am definitly designing the light around the functions. The form will follow, and hopefully it will look and feel at least OK. My target customer is myself, because I want a flashlight with all the features I have thinking about:
1)Bright- 3 white luxeons or a red, blue and green mixed to white. Preferably high dome.
2)Touch on
3)Designing to use 8 nimh batteries.
If other people like it that is great, but the light is ultimatly for me.

when you said Touch on, it reminded me of FET field effect transisters, i forget How but some of the cute things we did with them at different levels, like just getting CLOSE to it we would have it trigger something.
it would be pretty cool if i could remember what we did, because you could have the flashlight turn to a low glow when your near it, then have it get brighter as you get closer, and switch a relay to go full when you grab it.

Idea, dont know how to pull it off though.

Funny you should mention this; I bought a Brinkman Nexstar and did not notice at the time that it had no real switch, other than turning the head.

The trick with the FET was to attach something like a small plate to the gate, and the 60Hz power lines (or in remote areas, the capacitance in your body charged by the Earth's magnetic firld) would generate enough of an electrical field through, and around your body, to turn on the transistor. This can also be done quite easily with most modern op amps also. The real trick is to shield the circuit from radio frequency energy, etc. Think about such a circuit in the glove box of a car; it's surounded by all kinds of electronics, most radiating some kind of energy. But, there should be some way to balance it all.

I was thinking more about something like a disc, cut in two halfs, that when you place your thumb on the disc, an op amp sees the reduction in resistance, and turns the light on, but then it's not a waterproof solution, as if wet it would turn on......have to think about this some more........any other ideas out there?

Battery Savers www.batterysavers.com has a circuit that automatically turns the flashlight ON as soon as it senses movement. (They are experimenting with some Dorcy models) It is a very sensitive non-mercury 360-degree sensor. It's hard to pick it up without the flashlight going ON. If there is no motion, it will automatically turn itself OFF after a preset time. And, there is a master on/off.

Check it out.
www.batterysavers.com