5,400 lumens,How would you wire up???

[Freelandin]

Hey guys, new to LED moding, and a bit light on electrical knowledge, so if anyone wanted to give me some advice and feedback that would be great, mt issue is that im almost done with my light body (see pic) but I would like to see how some of you would wire up (6) p7's c-bin's......what drivers you would use, what voltage, would you wire up 3 in one circuit, 3 on another....just wanted to see what you guys think, like i said, i have the body almost done, and all i purchased so far is the 6 p7's...any idea's would be very much appreciated and if you have the liberty of time, wiring drawings would help my understanding, tx again

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[ti-force]

How much room do you have in this light for batteries? What reflectors are you planning to use? It looks like you will have plenty of heatsinking. You can go here, to CPF member, Torchboys driver page and see if you can find a driver for your setup. He's put together a very useful page.

 

[them0nk]

---completely off topic--- holy crap dude. *small round of applause* having been a machinist for 3 years I know how hard that was to make, being a complete GEEK, i think that's bad @$$ man. i'd hate to be your neighbor when you turned that thing on... as my new neighbors will in the mountains when i turn on my flashlights up there hahaha

great work on that so far man... make sure to post some pics of it done & turned on one day. (just don't point it at my house to take the pictures hahaha)

 

[Freelandin]

Tx ti....well honestly I was hoping i could get away with NOT using reflectors and use the body the way it is, meaning the reflectors will be the 1'' ballmill holes i "drilled" into the block......ive never done this so we'll see...and I will get some more detailed pics up of the inside of it (no room for batteries at all, well....maybe 2 18650's, but i wanted the battery pack to be remote) It was intended for mountain biking but realistically its to big and a wee bit heavy, so.... we'll see where it ends up....but i am going to finish it someday!

themOnk, i wont dare insult the machinist/toolmaker community by calling myself one, im just a lucky hack with enough common sense to get by,but tx, and lucky enough to access to a pretty good machine shop. I will get some more pics as it evolves, its been very slow going, so far what you see was 16 hours of work

 

[cityevader]

Is the body itself also the reflector? Seems like it since there's such a smooth transition from the sides to the emitter holes.

I'd use a setup like this: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=201392
using maybe three 18650's for each group of three. That way you could toggle each bank on/off separately. Get a good hour run time too.

 

[ti-force]

*EDIT* Sorry Cityevader, I didn't realize you linked to Downloads thread until after I posted this. *EDIT*

Tx ti....well honestly I was hoping i could get away with NOT using reflectors and use the body the way it is, meaning the reflectors will be the 1'' ballmill holes i "drilled" into the block......ive never done this so we'll see...and I will get some more detailed pics up of the inside of it (no room for batteries at all, well....maybe 2 18650's, but i wanted the battery pack to be remote) It was intended for mountain biking but realistically its to big and a wee bit heavy, so.... we'll see where it ends up....but i am going to finish it someday!

Are you planning to polish the 1" ballmill holes, or leave them as they are?

I think I've found an excellent driver setup for this light. It's a 7135 based driver setup. They're pretty inexpensive too, so that's a plus. Anyway, CPF member Download came up with this configuration. It's designed to drive 3xP7's, delivering 2.8A to each one, so all you need to do is build two of these driver setups. One for each set of three P7's.

The first link is directly to CPF member Downloads thread and the second link is to a thread by CPF member StefanFS, who used this same driver setup and took pictures during his build. This might give you a better idea of how to do it. Keep us updated. This thing should put out a ton of light, as long as your non-reflector setup doesn't cause excessive loss. Like I said earlier, it looks like you will have tons of heatsinking, so it should be at least 3600 real out the front lumens.

First thread

Second thread

Since your planning to use an external canister to house the batteries, you should have plenty of room.

 

[Freelandin]

Had a few disappointments with the light over the weekend, I wired up each P7 to a 18650 direct just to get it up and running to evaluate the beam shot (sorry no picture, i had no camera on me) I really thought it would be a lot better than it was, all it really did is flood the hell out of all the light coming out, no spot what so ever, ti.....I am going to try and polish the aluminum to see if that will help, If not I will have to modify the body to accept "real" reflectors.....or start from scratch

Also, I was a bit shocked at how hot this thing got, couldn't even touch it after a few minutes , i mean with all this aluminum I really thought it was enough heat sink.....may have to go back to the drawing board with this one.

 

[ti-force]

I really think you need to get a mirror polish to reflect as much light as possible, but it depends on the angles as to what the beam will look like, and the more I look at it, the more I think it will only be a ton of flood. If it doesn't turn out like expected, I'm sure you can find some type of reflector that will work (one reflector per emitter). An aspherical lens for each emitter would be really cool haha... That would be a serious wall of light.

How thick is the aluminum where the emitters will be/are mounted?