ElektroLumens Wall-of-Fire is a 205 F flashlight

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kirby

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I recently purchased a fairly new WOF from another CPF member. It is a 3D Maglite flood version with four P7 and original bezel and is powered by 12 AA Ni Mh housed in a Fivemega battery holder/adaptor.

I have been turning it on mainly a few seconds at a time, up to max of about 1 min.

Yesterday I though I would leave it on longer. I tail stand it and used it to illuminate a room. About 15-20 min later I thought the light got a bit dim. So I proceeded to turn it off. It got so hot that I nearly dropped it.:poof:

I quickly dashed over to fetch my infra red thermometer with laser guidance.

The bezel is well over 95C or over 205F. Even the tail is over 60C or 140F . It was so hot that I could not even hold the tail end of the torch with bare hands.

Quickly unscrewed the tail cap wtih a towel and took out the battery holder. The Powerex batteries at the top end measuring over 65C or 150F.

I think I would have done permanent damage to the Ni Mh. What do you think?

I am surprised that the rubber of the switch has not melted yet.

The actual temperature would have been higher then the measurements above because the light has been cooled down for a minute or so while I was fetching the infra red thermometer.

Do you have a WOF (four P7) with original Maglite head or the custom head?
How hot did your light get and how long have you been running it to get that temperature?

This is a serious overheating and heat management problem. Obviously the heat sink is doing its job and so is the metal tube. However the heat generated would prevent the light be used for any decent amount of time continuously.

When I first considering a WOF, Kurni predicted that there would be heat management issues. He was, unfortunately, right.:eek:

This light is supposed to replace my old 500000 candlepower halogen light (which cost less than 1/10th as much) running on a 6V lead acid battery. I can run it until it is drained without any problem. Looks like the replacement is not going to happen with this heat issue. :thumbsdow

I doubt there is a way out of it. I may just have to run it at short period of time and let it cool down a bit between bursts. :mad:

Comments are welcome.
 
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I don't have such a beast, but I'd sure think that this sort of light is meant more for brief periods of amazing your friends than for use for long periods of time.
 
kirby said:
The bezel is well over 95C or over 205F. Even the tail is over 60C or 140F . It was so hot that I could not even hold the tail end of the torch with bare hands.

...

The actual temperature would have been higher then the measurements above because the light has been cooled down for a minute or so while I was fetching the infra red thermometer.
Click to expand...

I captured this from P7 data sheet

Temperature.gif


I have no idea what your junction temperature was, but I am guessing that it would have been higher than 95C because no heat sink is perfect. There had to be thermal resistance between the junction, WOF heat sink, and M@g body. Note that Al is a good thermal conductor, but it is not the best.

I am guessing that the operating temperature exceeded 85C, I don't know how this impacted the four P7.

I naturally worry about the more-expensive components, which were the four P7. NiMH are cheaper; they're easily replaceable.
 
if a light can heat up to 95C in ambient temperature obviously the wof isn't practical at all....on land, anyone tried running it underwater?
 
There is a place for this thread and it is Elektrolumens forum on the Market Place. He monitors that forum and will address your issues.

Bill
 
Bullzeyebill said:
kirby, have you contacted Wayne at Elektrolumens?

Bill
Click to expand...

No I have not. Not yet.

I want to see if anyone has similar experience as me since there should be quite a few WOF out there by now.

I doubt there is any easy solution to this overheating problem of my flood version of WOF. I think there is really nothing anyone can do to remedy it, unless you are operating it in sub zero temperature or under water.

With such a high temperature achieved, I suspect even the custom head (with 4 little reflectors in the head) version of WOF, with larger heat sink, might have the same problem if the light is left on for 20 min or so continuously. My light is 3D. I could not even hold it at the tail end. Therefore, even for a 6D Maglite body, you won't be able to hold it at the middle part of the body.

By the way, I didn't buy this light to show off. These days, I don't need to show off anything anymore. :) I bought it to replace the halogen light mentioned above.
 
These super high performance light are not designed to be left alone by themselves tailstanding to Illuminate a room unfortunately. Many lights even production lights would get very hot almost to the point of not being able to hold. If you want to illuminate a room purchase a cheap off the shelf lantern.

This was completely expected for a quad P7 light in such a small host. Before purchasing any custom high powered light you need to do your homework to see if it will be acceptable for your intended application.


Mac
 
That is something to expected from that sort of light. I mean its four P7s. That amounts to 16 high powered LEDs. Maybe next time you want to light a up a room for that long you may want to stick the flashlight into a bucket of water and run a fan to cool it off.
The heat management is working fine. I would be very worried if that flashlight did not get hot.
I also have a infrared thermometer and took some temperature readings of a Q5 LED in a P60 drop in. The temperature climbed up to over 100F in a short time. Matter of fact the reason why I decided to take temperature readings was because I was worried that my flashlight was not getting warm enough after running it for extended periods of time at full brightness.
 
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cmacclel said:
These super high performance light are not designed to be left alone by themselves tailstanding to Illuminate a room unfortunately.
Mac
Click to expand...

I was in the room all the time. It was merely a test to find out the estimated run time of the batteries.

cmacclel said:
Before purchasing any custom high powered light you need to do your homework to see if it will be acceptable for your intended application.
Click to expand...

I have done as much research as I could on WOF.
This degree of overheating was quite unexpected. It was not documented anywhere.

The purpose of this thread is to find out from other owners of WOF (quad P7) if they have experienced similar issue. :)
 
Unattended means not in your hand.

Unless you have state of the art electornics with thermal management you should never perform runtime tests without continuosly monitoring the temperature. Most people use fans blowing on there lights when performing runtimes tests and still monitor the temperature.


You said

The purpose of this thread is to find out from other owners of WOF (quad P7) if they have experienced similar issue. :)


I can assure that everyone that has a quad P7 in a MagLite host would have this problem regardless of heatsink. Thats why pretty much all my LED lights are multi level so that you can have the MAX power to wow everyone and then have a lower bightness setting that is real world useable.




Mac
 
If you intend to run it continuously in this way, you could always try adding a little resistance. OK it won't be as bright but you'll get less heat and more battery life. Just make sure the resistor can handle the power. OR maybe even a D2DIM driver
 
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:shrug:
Hook up one of those little CPU radiators to it! Well it would look really interesting anyway! Not too portable though.
 
Maybe these sort of multi-P7 lights need some major finning designs on their bodies and heads/bezels. I would think that sort of design would give very effective cooling as well as being visually attractive.
 
What you need is a multi-level driver, :thinking:.
Max. level for a short Wow effect.
Mid or Low level for long run.

Here is a Poorman way.
 
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