Al_Havemann
Enlightened
Despite my best efforts here I can't seem to make the images appear so I've just added links that seem to work.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/p551f4bfae19018fa2cfc7f7f7f2f7d9b/fc49898a.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/p783502c2a1a7933cd05825538da369db/fc498989.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/p47625d8245d92206e4f7d5adb4a1eb08/fc498988.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/p24ecf16e8aa3374dc51ef2d918429014/fc498973.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/pee538baa114e67fd42839400a0671d48/fc498970.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/p7120c05ca34eadaa7bae0e169915b79f/fc498964.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/p87eeb285afb5d15b483e20772e4b0177/fc498963.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/pc3f30447344c665b3f0dd855970abc6e/fc498960.jpg.orig.jpg
This is the end product of an effort to build a reliable 5 watt Luxeon Star bike head light. I tried several variations before settling on this configuration as being both functional and simple enough to actually build since I haven’t access to any real machine tools and my metal working skills are pretty much non-existent.
Essentially, this is just a 1 1/4" X 4" copper pipe nipple. One end was ground out slightly with a rotary tool to accept a 30mm optic. The Luxeon was bonded to an aluminum slug and the slug bonded to a cut down computer CPU heat sink. I used a rotary cutoff tool to cut the heat sink to the desired size and shape to fit into the nipple. The wires were attached and the whole assembly slid into the copper nipple until it mated with the optic, then it was secured with a couple of dabs of hot melt glue (in case I needed to disassemble it). I drilled two holes in the nipple and attached a simple bar mount that I had from an old light.
The battery is a 4.5ah, 12v water bottle from a Nightsun bike light. I opened it up and fitted a Led Dynamics 5 watt driver puck inside and attached a switch to the battery side so that when switched off, the driver puck is powered off as well. To make it fit I had to cut off the two aluminum mounting tabs from the puck. If anyone decides to cut off the tabs as I did, be careful to protect the wires from being damaged or even touching the sharp edges. I had to purchase another puck when one of the wires coming from the puck did just that - Poof!..no more puck!.
OK, so how does it work?. Well, there’s not much to this rig, there’s only a few parts and it looks crude, but it works quite well for all that. It does a reasonable job of lighting the road, as you would expect though, it’s better for being seen than to see with. The light is almost blinding to oncoming traffic, there’s not much chance they’ll miss seeing you. The thing to remember is that even though it’s a Luxeon, that doesn’t make it a magic light, and it’s not. Five watts is five watts, no matter how efficient. Light output is pretty much equivalent to my helmet mounted 10 watt halogen, but the halogen, with no thermal limitations and a high grade reflector, controls the output better than the Luxeon does with just the 30mm optic. The Luxeon is good enough to use by itself with confidence up to about 17-18 mph on pavement or at modest speeds on well maintained fire roads.
Run time using th 4.5 ah battery is excellent at about 7 hours. The Led Dynamics driver drops off line quickly when the supply hits about 7.8 volts. Overall, the puck does a good job of pulling everything it can from the battery. It draws about 720ma from the battery and delivers 6.83v @ 645ma to the Luxeon which must be running near optimal since it has a very bright, white beam with no blue or green artifacts at all, indicating that it is neither over or under driven. The light has good reach to about 75 feet but there is considerable beam scatter that could be possibly be improved by better optics. There is also a black spot directly in the center of the beam, not really a problem, just annoying.
I had trouble with heat buildup with my first effort at building a light, but this assembly seems to be managing it just fine. In six rides, each more than 2 hours I haven’t seen it go above 75 degrees on the outer housing when moving. The inside heat sink is consistently about 10 degrees warmer, indicating that good heat transfer is taking place. Heat does build up if I leave the light on while sitting still for more than 5 minutes or so. I don’t know how high it would go before stabilizing since I didn’t plan on extended stationary usage, but I have seen it go as high as 105 degrees after 10 minutes with no air flow for cooling. So far I’ve used it for about 12 hours of riding with no problems. It’s a great feeling not to have to worry about the light getting dim halfway through the ride, it’s just as bright after 2 hours as it was at the start. I would normally try to be close to home after a couple of hours, but the Luxeon completely frees me from that limitation.
It’s a good light for nearly any type of normal riding like pavement and fire roads, but for fast down hills, trail, single track or technical, I supplement the Luxeon with a helmet mounted 10 watt halogen. I can’t really fault the Luxeon for this, I’d need to supplement any 10 watt light single light anyway, except maybe for an HID, which is in another class entirely.
I’m sorry that the beam shots aren’t better, the pictures really don’t do it justice. The Luxeon is really doing a much better job than they would indicate. Unfortunately, the camera I have is an inexpensive model that isn’t very low light sensitive.
Al
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/p551f4bfae19018fa2cfc7f7f7f2f7d9b/fc49898a.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/p783502c2a1a7933cd05825538da369db/fc498989.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/p47625d8245d92206e4f7d5adb4a1eb08/fc498988.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/p24ecf16e8aa3374dc51ef2d918429014/fc498973.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/pee538baa114e67fd42839400a0671d48/fc498970.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/p7120c05ca34eadaa7bae0e169915b79f/fc498964.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/p87eeb285afb5d15b483e20772e4b0177/fc498963.jpg.orig.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid60/pc3f30447344c665b3f0dd855970abc6e/fc498960.jpg.orig.jpg
This is the end product of an effort to build a reliable 5 watt Luxeon Star bike head light. I tried several variations before settling on this configuration as being both functional and simple enough to actually build since I haven’t access to any real machine tools and my metal working skills are pretty much non-existent.
Essentially, this is just a 1 1/4" X 4" copper pipe nipple. One end was ground out slightly with a rotary tool to accept a 30mm optic. The Luxeon was bonded to an aluminum slug and the slug bonded to a cut down computer CPU heat sink. I used a rotary cutoff tool to cut the heat sink to the desired size and shape to fit into the nipple. The wires were attached and the whole assembly slid into the copper nipple until it mated with the optic, then it was secured with a couple of dabs of hot melt glue (in case I needed to disassemble it). I drilled two holes in the nipple and attached a simple bar mount that I had from an old light.
The battery is a 4.5ah, 12v water bottle from a Nightsun bike light. I opened it up and fitted a Led Dynamics 5 watt driver puck inside and attached a switch to the battery side so that when switched off, the driver puck is powered off as well. To make it fit I had to cut off the two aluminum mounting tabs from the puck. If anyone decides to cut off the tabs as I did, be careful to protect the wires from being damaged or even touching the sharp edges. I had to purchase another puck when one of the wires coming from the puck did just that - Poof!..no more puck!.
OK, so how does it work?. Well, there’s not much to this rig, there’s only a few parts and it looks crude, but it works quite well for all that. It does a reasonable job of lighting the road, as you would expect though, it’s better for being seen than to see with. The light is almost blinding to oncoming traffic, there’s not much chance they’ll miss seeing you. The thing to remember is that even though it’s a Luxeon, that doesn’t make it a magic light, and it’s not. Five watts is five watts, no matter how efficient. Light output is pretty much equivalent to my helmet mounted 10 watt halogen, but the halogen, with no thermal limitations and a high grade reflector, controls the output better than the Luxeon does with just the 30mm optic. The Luxeon is good enough to use by itself with confidence up to about 17-18 mph on pavement or at modest speeds on well maintained fire roads.
Run time using th 4.5 ah battery is excellent at about 7 hours. The Led Dynamics driver drops off line quickly when the supply hits about 7.8 volts. Overall, the puck does a good job of pulling everything it can from the battery. It draws about 720ma from the battery and delivers 6.83v @ 645ma to the Luxeon which must be running near optimal since it has a very bright, white beam with no blue or green artifacts at all, indicating that it is neither over or under driven. The light has good reach to about 75 feet but there is considerable beam scatter that could be possibly be improved by better optics. There is also a black spot directly in the center of the beam, not really a problem, just annoying.
I had trouble with heat buildup with my first effort at building a light, but this assembly seems to be managing it just fine. In six rides, each more than 2 hours I haven’t seen it go above 75 degrees on the outer housing when moving. The inside heat sink is consistently about 10 degrees warmer, indicating that good heat transfer is taking place. Heat does build up if I leave the light on while sitting still for more than 5 minutes or so. I don’t know how high it would go before stabilizing since I didn’t plan on extended stationary usage, but I have seen it go as high as 105 degrees after 10 minutes with no air flow for cooling. So far I’ve used it for about 12 hours of riding with no problems. It’s a great feeling not to have to worry about the light getting dim halfway through the ride, it’s just as bright after 2 hours as it was at the start. I would normally try to be close to home after a couple of hours, but the Luxeon completely frees me from that limitation.
It’s a good light for nearly any type of normal riding like pavement and fire roads, but for fast down hills, trail, single track or technical, I supplement the Luxeon with a helmet mounted 10 watt halogen. I can’t really fault the Luxeon for this, I’d need to supplement any 10 watt light single light anyway, except maybe for an HID, which is in another class entirely.
I’m sorry that the beam shots aren’t better, the pictures really don’t do it justice. The Luxeon is really doing a much better job than they would indicate. Unfortunately, the camera I have is an inexpensive model that isn’t very low light sensitive.
Al
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