Lens Suspension for budget LED's

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ACHË

Newly Enlightened
Joined
May 17, 2009
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Location
San Juan, PR
I have several entry level lights that on more than one ocasion have been accidentally
dropped to the ground. Even though they only fell about 3 feet; a few of the glass lens
have broken on impact.


Upon inspection, I noticed that some of them had tiny O-rings on one side of the lens and some didn't have any at all.

Looking to higher quality lights for ideas on how to prevent this in the future I noticed than many of them have two
O-rings cradling the lens and thicker lens.

This seems like a good idea and it has obviously been tried & tested; so I ordered the parts and I plan to do this
as soon as the parts arrive.

However for some of the other lights, I noticed that the lens had some clearance around
the glass and the head bezel (about 1~2 mm) so I was thinking of using 3 O-rings in the following configuration:


1-One cushoning the lens from the front of the head bezel.

2-One preventing side to side movement & contact with the bezel.

3-One cushoning the lens from the main head.


In theory, this seems like the lens would be suspended & isolated from any contact with metal parts, touching only rubber
allowing it to wiggle arround not touching any metal if the light was dropped. The entire assembly should be watertight as
only the Ist ring should come in contact with the elements.

I made this crude drawing to ilustrate this concept better & see what you guys think.

LEDHeadSuspension.jpg


I know this is will seem very basic to most of you, but Im relatively new here and am just getting started on learning
the inner workings of flashlighs, flashlight electronics, batteries, LED's, etc.


I will be posting soon on my first D.I.Y. build(with a MXDL host body) which should be a good hands on learning experience.
 
One the first two drawings o-rings 1 and 2 extend too far. In practice o-ring 3 can move up or down and allow the glass to slip. A good cheap alternative for o-ring 3 is to use a wide rubber band and cut it to length if need be. Good to see you putting some thought into this. Nice job.
 
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