Things I learned this week:

1: Lamina now has a 4.3Vf white LED that is rated at 120+ lumens.
INFO HERE
Well I had to order some stuff from Mouser last week, so I figured, what the heck, I'll give it a try, even though no one has had much success building a really useful flashlight with any of the Lamina engines before.

Lathed out a pretty massive heat sink assembly and stuck it in a 3D M*g. Didn't even bother to try an optic on it.... dim,dim, dim.

Put it in a 4D M*g with barely used but rather old alkalines (1.58V No Load on each)... Oh Yeah, much brighter!!!.... and drawing just exactly maximum spec. current: 1600ma.

With the Fraen optic that Lamina recommends on it, it has a fairly pleasing "warm white" beam with no "throw".... I'm not kidding, useful range is about 35 ft indoors and maybe 25 ft outdoors in the wet woods around the house last night; 500 LUX @ 1 m.... I'd guesstimate about a 25 degree beam. Pretty sad---- A waste of about 90 of those rated 120+ Lumens.

With the Carclo 50mm 2 degree optic you get a little more throw... maybe 70 - 80 ft outdoors... But Boy, is it an ugly beam. Lots of artifacts and hunks of pure yellow here and there ... About 2400 Lux peak @ 1 meter.

I Shan't be bothering with these for flashlights, although they might be useful for some kind of indoor mood lighting or something.
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2: Side emitter (LXHL-DW09) Luxeons aren't worth a darn using 17 & 20 mm IMS reflectors (~ 300LUX @ 1M out of a SYAK bin) No throw...

This is the first side emitter I have had; Prior to working with it tonight, I had only read about them.... And I had always been under the impression that side emitters were designed for use in reflectors (although primarily for backlight panels and things like that) and were supposed to be better in a reflector than a high dome.

Boy, was I wrong about that.

2300LUX @ 1M out of a SYAK high dome with an IMS 20mm reflector.. Good throw too.

I did modify an old Surefire P60 (27mm) reflector and got a little better throw out of the side emitter, but was far from impressed.
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3: Again tonight was the first time I messed with the IMS reflectors... and I have to admit that I do like the beam they give (especially the 20mm ones) with a Luxeon III. Darn good throw, just like many here have said. However the Carclo 2degree 50mm optic DOES beat it significantly in a single LED to single LED application..

But I was impressed enough with them that I want to build a multiple LED light with them similar to some of Electrolumens offerings.
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4: The reflector in a G&P 12V Lamp Assembly SCREWS off the bulb holder /spring base unlike the glued on ones that Surefire uses. That would make replacing the bulb with a WA bulb or something somewhat easier, AND should make doing a LED mod to them a bunch easier too, although I haven't quite figured out how to fit a Luxeon emitter in there and still have a good heat sink beneath it without serious modification to the rest of the unit.
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5: I also learned that a cat can't run a lathe or solder worth a darn, even if you lock them in the workshop for 10 hours..... But they sure can tear stuff up trying to get out! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif

did you try using the stock mag reflector for that lamnia? It should produce a beam around teh size of a 5w lux it seems, but it might be ugly.. but better than the 50mm optic..

No.... You would have to build some kind of long pedestal for the Lamina to get it up inside of the reflector, and unless you did some kind of major machining magic, your heatsinking would be really lousy... and these things run HOT as it is..... The M*g light running the single Lamina gets hotter, faster on 1600ma than my 3 Luxeon III M*g light gets pulling 2350ma. even though the heatsink on the lamina is roughly twice the mass as the one with the 3 IIIs.

Without great heatsinking, it would be a race between the LED burning itself out and melting the stock reflector IMHO.

Now one of the custom ALUMINUM M*ag reflectors might do the trick...... But I'll leave that experiment to someone else.

Besides that, the diameter of the ceramic wafer of which the LED is an integral part is way too big to fit in the hole in a stock m*g reflector.... You'd have to trim it on a diamond or green carbide grinding wheel... and that would probably destroy the embedded circuit conductors... You would have to grind past the solder pads to reduce the diameter enough.

Interesting. I was ordering some stuff from Digikey, and also went aheand and threw in a white Lamina BL4000 - but I went ahead and got the high voltage version (slightly more efficient). It should be here in a few days, so I can experiment a bit myself.