Attack the True Million CP Mark with the smallest possible HID.

[ma_sha1]

As many CPFers could attest, the addiction of CP is such a strong urge that as soon as you hit a landmark level, it instantly looses it's luster, then the next Landmark CP level becomes the only thing the cold cure the urge.

My first light that Hit the 0.5 million mark is the smallest 75W HID, which was just built a week ago. http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=296410

Now, I have already developed an uncurable urge to attack the 1 million CP mark. I know I can easily get there with a thor 15M/9" reflector HID mod, but the Thor hosts were way too big for my liking.

I want to make it happen with the smallest HID possible!

The Host I have carefully chosen is the light on the Right:
It's a 35W HID light called Mozo Mega. It's not really Mega in size.
Measures 8"x11.5". It has a 6" Reflector.

This is the smallest common HID spot light out side of the 4" class (N30, L35, Mozo L35 clone etc). Significantly smaller than Thor & it has the large 7AH battery that could withstand a 75W HID upgrade.

The same light has been sold under many brand names, some of them were extremely popular: AI (Armandotech Illuminator 3152), Vector HID, Sam's club POB etc. They are pretty much all the same except variation of lamps kelvin & body color & price. They all look the same & I bet thwy all came out of the same factory in China.

Although it's still on the Compact side of HIDs spotlights, it is still pretty big, especially for me, who's modding career started with Mag solitaires :nana:,
So, this is probably the largest light I'll ever touch. I really don't want to go any bigger.

I am still amazed by how small & light my 75W Mozo L35 clone is.

Just by eye balling the reflector side by side, I could tell that the 6" reflector, which is pretty deep, has about 2x reflective surface area as the 4" reflector in the L35 clone, thus, I cold anticipate at least 2x the lux vs. the stock L35 clone if it's focused & centered well.

Fired up side by side with the 75W L35 clone, I can already see the million lux potential. The spot is tiny (A known fact on the POB) & so is the corona. It's not yet as bright as the l35 clone but it's only running stock at 35W.

1/1250 super low exposure. Left is stock Mozo HID 6" reflector. Right is 75W HID 4" reflector L35 clone.

The Lux measurement came out at an outstanding 430,000 Lux @1 meter.
(The 75W 4" L35 clone was 552,000 lux@ 1 meter)

This is an excellent starting point.
The Road map towards >1 million lux @ 1 meter is as such:

1, Bore out the plastic bezel,there's some plastic hanging over the glass that blocks part of the outer edge of reflector, this is free lux to be gained.

2, Upgrade to Philips 4300K D2S lamp. Besides the color, I am curious to see if the Phillips lamp will give out more lux on the same ballast.
As I've shown before in the 75W mod, simply swap lamps to ebay 4300K from stock 6000K did NOTHING on the output. (The conventional claim is that lower kevin lamp gives higher lumens).

Will the Phllips lamp really give higher output? I never believes in conventional claims until I see that fact, thre'll be only one way to find out.

3. Upgrade to 75W ballast just as I did in the L35 clone, which tripled the lux @ 1meter over stock.

I am confident that I will get above the one million mark, possibly in the 1.2 to 1.3 million lux @ 1 meter range.

4. If I get into the Million CP club, I may reward the light with a 7AH li-ion upgrade, as the 7AH stock lead acid battery weights a ton.


Stay tuned :devil:

 

[ma_sha1]

My updated list of Various Spotlight True CPs for reference.

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=296410
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[jasonck08]

I don't agree with some of these ratings.

24W HID vs 40W HID, the 40W HID is 10x as bright... yea right!

 

[ma_sha1]

I don't agree with some of these ratings.

24W HID vs 40W HID, the 40W HID is 10x as bright... yea right!

They are not "ratings", they are different peoples measurements.
24W usually has 3" reflector, 40K lux is about right on.

I had a 24W Oracle HID, it was out thrown by my Mag SST-90/8.5Amp in deep Rebel SMO, the mag SST-90 in rebel SMO does about 45K lux.

HIDs less than 30W are known to be very inefficient.
35W HID with 3" reflector will do 120-150Klux, which is a lot more gain than just 10W could account for, it's the efficiency gain.

If you meant the 40W being Polarion X1, 400K is quite high but not too far off, as it's known to have an upper end reflector, much better than typical HID with 3" reflector cold achieve.

 

[ma_sha1]

This project took the back seat when I decided to mod a 25 Million CP Sunforce instead. The sunforce HID thread had some promising beam shots, which I figure would make a monster HID after 75W upgrade.

Boy, I couldn't have been more wrong:
Received my Sunforce 25 million from Northern tools. but it's much smaller,
It's the one to the right & it has a 5" reflector. The bulb is off center & it's not bright at all. I did a quick lux mneasuremnent & it came out only 80K lux@ 1 meter. The Mozo is 6" & did 430K lux@ 1 meter.

So, back to modding the Mozo. I too the lux measurement again, still 430 K lux.

First step is to bore out the Bezel. Here you can see, there are large "Tabs" protruding into the reflector area, in the photo, right tab hass been grind off. vs tab on the left intact:

In this Photo, All the tabs have been grind away:
You can see, there still a rim to hold the edge of the lens & Reflector, so the tabs really did not serve any function except blocking lights.

Nothing is in the way now:

Time to retake the lux measure ment: It came out a whopping 550K lux @ 1 meter, I couldn't believe it. there's no other mods yet, I did have to remove the reflector & then re-mount it after the Bezel grinding, but I can't believe the re-positioning of reflector would be the reason. I was expecting maybe 30K lux gain like I saw in the Mozo Ultralite/4' reflector HID mod. But it is what is is, the light now measures 550,000lux @ 1 meter, same lux as the 75W upgraded Mozo Ultralight (4" reflector) which is running at 75W!

 

[ma_sha1]

The second Phase of the modding as planned in the "Road Map" of post #1 is to upgrade the lamp to Philips D2S lamp. It is believed that Philips 4300K bunner could be as high as 30% better than generic HID Lamp.

Is it really? There is only one way to find out!

Philips D2S lamp on the Right, Stock H7? lamp on the left.
I got lucky although the Philips D2S is longer, the position of the Arc chamber from base is nearly identical for focusing!

Just for reference, the 75W lamp that came with the 75W HID kit has a
slightly larger Arc chamber. Sticking with 35W lamp while upping the ballast will give more throw!

Mounting of the D2S lamp was easy, all I had to do is file the edge a bit & bend the clip of the stock bulb holder, whola, it fits!

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish this & do a lux measurement.
The Phillips metal pieces on the lamp won't solder, so I had to wait for
getting a set of D2S lamp connector Pigtails in.

Until next time, so long for now.
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[JacobJones]

So did you ever get it finished? I read somewhere else that this thread got mostly deleted in the crash that happened early this year

 

[2100]

Well, i hit 1.35m with the SM5200. It's a bit shorter than the Amondotech 3152 like 2 inches shorter. The lens is a 7" but 6.25" visible. I think ma_sha hit 1.7m. But then i am using the black finned ballast 100W which fits in the SM5200, this would not fit into the Amodotech which only takes in slim ballasts. But then I am using lousy China bulbs, so that's taking 2 steps back. Anyway I am happy with 1.35m on my DX meter, which sort of under-reads quite a bit of say 10% compared to Ma_sha's meter?

 

[ma_sha1]

Yes, the light was finished & most of the posts were indeed lost during the crash.

2100, you are correct, it end up to be 1.7 Million cps & I used Phillips D2s bulb.
The DX meter is known to be under read between 10-30% based on many posts from various people,
when I had the DX meter, I would do DX meter +20% as a rough number to report before I bought the more expensive Extech EA30 meter.

Your 1.35 million would translate to ~1.62 million.


If you upgrade to a Phillip bulb, it'll get over 2 million CPs for sure. However, I do not recommend using 35W Philips bulb like I did, the cps were dropping about 20% no too long after the mod, I think the 35W bulb is not strong enough for 75-100 ballasts.

you should look for the 50W Phillip bulb if you want to upgrade the bulb.

Given that one of my Gen II Maxa Beam did only 2 million cps stock (The other one did 3 Million Cps stock),
2 million cps from this mod will look more impressive than stock gen II Maxa Beam due to the much higher lumens in the beam, thus,
a worthy mod in my book.

However, my 75W HID mod was soon blown away by my 1st DIY short arc ----the Mega Blaster:
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb...-Blaster-My-first-short-arc-mod-MegaRay-style

 

[2100]

What I learnt is that quite a few of my weaker chinese bulbs rated at 55W would have one of the electrodes eaten up, esp if you do a tailstand. Do not tailstand anything, preferably not even 45 deg for 5 seconds, when you are overdriving. That probably was what happened. Also preferably don't do more than 2 min runs, just enough to get the bulb hot enough for max performance and take a reading or picture that's it. So these are like pocket rockets or 445nm handheld lasers. Perfectly ok usage actually.

Change to the 75W bulbs if one needs extended periods of light with a slight drop in throw, also perfectly ok in my book.