INDOOR BEAMSHOTS: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

[greencardigan]

Hi all,

I've promised a few people to start a build log for my mag mod. This is it.

This is my first major light mod and my first build log. I have a few other LED lights but have been wanting something BIGGER.

Thanks to Techjunkie, wquiles, ti-force and others for their inspiational build logs. I've borrowed some of your ideas.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my build.


PARTS:

Black Maglite 3D
SST-90-W57S-F11-GN200, bin WN-EH
DX aspherical lense
Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive
Britelumens SST-90 heatsink
3 x AW IMR 26500 cells
DIY parallel battery holder
6 x AMC7135 linear regulator driver boards
18 AWG Teflon wire

Heaps of photos to come. :twothumbs

 

[greencardigan]

Re: Just another MAG Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

Some of the important bits arriving in the mail.

More mail. Teflon wire from eBay.

18 AWG wire soldered to SST-90. This was probably one of the harder parts of the build. Getting the wire bent down at the right angle wasn't easy.

LED glued to Britelumens heatsink using Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive. Good stuff.

The AMC driver boards. The one on the right has the diode removed.

A driver board ready to stack. I have cut the track around the outside to give me space to drill one of the holes.

3 drivers stacked. I have left the wire sticking out the top while I was testing. They get cut off later.

The proposed electrical schematic. The pin names shown on the AMC7135 board stack should be 'OUT' and 'GND'. LED - connects to the OUT pin and the GND pin connects to battery -. I am switching the connection to the VDD pins to control power to the LED.

The first power on with 2 dead AAs. It's working!

PART 2: Added 10 May

The usual switch mods

Top

Bottom

The connection between the switch and the regulator GND pin. You can also see the connection from battery + to the LED + which bypasses the switch.

The 3 connections comming out the top of the switch. The wire comming from the center goes to the VDD pins on the regulator boards. The switch is not modded for momentary action.

POWER ON! A test using 3 parallel regulator boards. It works!

My batteries were only charged to 4.00V and I was getting 4A through the LED. That works out to 1/3 Amp per AMC7135 chip. I think that's about normal.

I tried measuring the voltage across the LED at this current and only got 3.118V? I don't think I had modded the tail spring at this stage. Also, I wasn't measuring right at the LED???

Now, along comes another 3 x AMC7135 driver boards. These will be connected in parallel to each other.

Connections between GND and OUT pins.

Connections between VDD and OUT pins.

And it will just fit inside the 3D tube.

All connected, ready to drop into the top of the mag tube.

The usual tail spring resistance mod.

Here's my parallel holder for 3 x 26500 cells. I've started a seperate thread about it here.

And a tail spring extension. My holder with 3 x 26500 are shorter than 3 x D cells. Without this extension, the spring only just touches the batteries.

Current check with all 6 parallel regulators. 8 Amps. Again this is 1/3 Amp per AMC7135 chip. I was only getting 4.5A using the standard multimeter probes. Almost double with some thick wire. This test was also with the batteries at 4.00V. The current seems to stay fairly constant. I haven't got any thermal paste between the heatsink and mag tube yet so I dont want to run it for too long. I'll do a longer current test someday soon.

The finished mod! Looks like a standard 3D Maglite.

Well, almost like a standard Maglite. The DX aspherical gives it away. :laughing:

The Next Step
I'd like to add some dimming functionality for longer run times. Maybe by adding a D2Flex to PWM the VDD pins on the AMC7135 regulators.

Or maybe a simple DIY pwm circuit using a PIC microprocessor

Or I may just replace the AMC7135 boards with a suitable multimode buck driver once they are available (H6Flex or sector_cleared driver etc). This will allow me to ditch the parallel battery setup.

Beam shots to come when I find a good place to do them.

Thanks for reading. :twothumbs

 

[greencardigan]

Re: Just another MAG Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

BEAM SHOTS

I have compared this mag mod to my three other brightish lights.

Top = 3D Mag with SST-90 and DX aspherical. <--- THE LIGHT DISCUSSED IN THIS BUILD LOG
Second top = DX sku.31869 - SST-50 with deep OP reflector. Possibly only driven at 3A.
Third top = Another DX light with 3 x XR-E LEDs running at 750mA using Taskled BFlex regulator.
Bottom = EDI-T P3 using XR-E and aspherical lense. Claimed 250lm. 3 x AAA.

And heres the beamshots. They are in a slightly different order here. Taken at approximately 2.5 metres. Eack column is stopped down a bit more. I think I used apatures of f5.6, f9, f11, f16.

1st row = SST-90 Mag aspherical slightly off focus
2nd row = SST-90 Mag aspherical focused
3rd row = EDI-T P3 Aspherical
4th row = DX sku.31869 SST-50
5th row = DX 3 x XR-E

The SST-90 gives a very ugly beam when the aspherical is focused. The lines on the LED are clearly visible even when using it outdoors at longer distances.

 

[ti-force]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

I'm tuning in!!

Nice work so far:thumbsup:

 

[jasonck08]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

4.2A drive current?

 

[COAST]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

Can't wait for beamshots!

 

[greencardigan]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

4.2A drive current?

With the 3xAMC7135 boards I measured 4A neat. But the batteries weren't fully charged.

I'm adding 3 more boards so should get 8.4A.

 

[greencardigan]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

Update:

I have added the rest of the build photos to post 2.

I got 8A from batteries charged to 4.00V

Expected runtime is approx 50 minutes.

Beam shots to come when I find a suitable location.

 

[toby_pra]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

BEAMSHOTS PLEASE!

 

[greencardigan]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

Update

I tested the current this morning with the batteries charged to 4.2V and I was getting 8.2 Amps.

That's about 340mA per AMC7135 chip and 1.37A per board which is well within the specs.

Testing in my back yard shows it out throws all my other lights. The beam angle from the DX aspherical is a bit wider than I expected. I think I read that the DX lense had one of the narrowest beams?? Is that right??

Also, I'd like a bezel to protect the lense and cut out the ring of light that comes out the side. Does anyone here still make/sell suitable bezels?

 

[greencardigan]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

I'm trying to estimate how many lumens i'm getting. :thinking:

According to the datasheet, my 5700K WN bin LED should give 1000 to 1200 lumens at 3.15A.

At 8.2A it says the relative flux is about 250% = 2500 to 3000 lumens.

These are for 25 deg junction temps.

Assuming I have a junction temp of 125 deg, the relative flux is reduced to 80% = 2000 to 2400 lumens.

That sounds about right. Can anyone confirm these numbers.

 

[ti-force]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

I'm trying to estimate how many lumens i'm getting. :thinking:

According to the datasheet, my 5700K WN bin LED should give 1000 to 1200 lumens at 3.15A.

At 8.2A it says the relative flux is about 250% = 2500 to 3000 lumens.

These are for 25 deg junction temps.

Assuming I have a junction temp of 125 deg, the relative flux is reduced to 80% = 2000 to 2400 lumens.

That sounds about right. Can anyone confirm these numbers.

Yes, according to the datasheet, that could be a close estimate of emitter lumens as long as you're not having any problems. To get a rough OTF lumen estimate, subtract about 20% from those numbers. The only way to know for sure how the light performs is to send it to Bigchelis for testing in his IS. The only problem is, his sphere is only capable of measuring up to 1500 OTF lumens, so if it makes more than that you won't really know because his meter will be pegged at 1500. But, if this light is able to hold 1500 lumens for a sustained amount of time, BigC would probably be grinning from ear to ear. Oh yeah, you do know those junction temperatures are in Celsius right? 125 degrees Celsius would be 257 degrees Fahrenheit. WOW! That's getting pretty toasty.

 

[Lumencraft (Matt)]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

Congratulations, I am glad to see you are happy with the result. Its always nice when a project comes together.

 

[Techjunkie]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

Congratulations! This is my kind of build :twothumbs

 

[aurum]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

Beamshots

 

[greencardigan]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

Congratulations! This is my kind of build :twothumbs

I have to admit this light was very Techjunkie inspired. Thanks!

 

[greencardigan]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

Beamshots

I still havent had time to look for a good spot to do beam shots without blinding my neighbours. Patience...

 

[greencardigan]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

I'm not real happy with the DX aspherical lense. The beam angle is still a bit wider than I'd like.

Are there other asphericals that might give a narrower beam?

 

[ma_sha1]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

I'm not real happy with the DX aspherical lense. The beam angle is still a bit wider than I'd like.

Are there other asphericals that might give a narrower beam?

There not much you could do to narrow the beam down unless you break the 2" size limit.
To get narrower beam, you need to increase EFL (Effective Focal Length), but if you keep the same diameter, then increased EFL lens will reduce the amount of light going out the Aspheric. So, basically, you need to keep the diameter/EFL ratio (ideally 1.4-1.5 range, as seen by Surplus shed 52mm/37mm & 52mm/35mm lens where there's many past posts). Achieve the increase of EFL by going with bigger lens while maintain the 1.4-1.5 OD/EFL ratio.

There's a 66mm DX lens that's excellent! There's also the DEFT sized 3" lens you can get on ebay.
Either lens could be mounted to mag but requires bigger "turbo head".
You can mount a bigger head on Mag. see my two post below about these lens & the MagDEFT where I mounted 3"
DEFT head on a Mag.

#1: How to make XPG throw better than XRE?
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/...d.php?t=264722

#2: Franken MagDEFT SST-50 >115,000 Lux @ 1 Meter
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/...d.php?t=268894

 

[greencardigan]

Re: Just another Mag Mod, SST90, Aspherical, AMC7135, 3P IMR26500

Thanks for the links. I think I've seen them already but will have another read.

So essentially, the DX lens is about as good as I'll get in a standard Mag head?