Maxabeam & Supernova bulbs (Photos)

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larryk

larryk

Enlightened
Joined
Jan 30, 2003
Messages
777
Location
Milwaukee, Wi. USA
I have a Gen 2 Maxabeam and the later model Supernova with the Li-Ion battery. The Supernova outputs about 10% more lumens than the Maxabeam, but never had the tight spot of the Maxabeam. When shinning at a wall 15 feet away the Supernova's spot was almost twice as large as the Maxabeam's. Both lights set for tightest focus. Today I decided to remove the bulbs and see what, if any differences there are. As you can see in the photos the cathode and anode placement is different. Also the pin on the rear of the Maxabeam's bulb is tapered. I swapped bulbs and holy cow now the Supernova has a tighter spot than the Maxabeam ever had. The only drawback is there is only about 1/4 the flood, but I rarely use the flood option anyway. The Supernova bulb in the Maxabeam had a very large spot at the tightest focus. In the photos the Supernova bulb is always on top.

b3vj8.jpg

b2jf7.jpg

b1qx1.jpg

b4de8.jpg
 
I just bought a NL-75-2 short arc searchlight. At 15' the smallest

round spot I can make is about 10". I have ordered Ushio UXL-75XE

bulb and will try that this week if I get it in time.:cool:

Dave
 
Oh sweet! Larryk, you are the man. I have been wanting to see the Maxabeam bulb compared to the SN one. Very interesting findings, thanks.:)

I think there is a way of getting smaller hot spot with the Supernova quite easily. On the Supernova you get the tightest spot when the bulb is in its out most position that is limited by the focus adjustment. I think one could just insert a 1-2mm thick round flat spacer with hole under the bulb in the socket. This would move the bulb outwards and allow adjustment to tighter hot spot than before. The maximum flood spot would get smaller ofcource, thats no big deal.

The problem might be how to get the spacer out of the socket once it is there. Maybe if it was small enough in diameter so it would drop out of the socket if you remove the bulb and turn the light so the reflector is facing down...
 
Last edited:
Davekan said:
I just bought a NL-75-2 short arc searchlight. At 15' the smallest

round spot I can make is about 10". I have ordered Ushio UXL-75XE

bulb and will try that this week if I get it in time.:cool:

Dave
Click to expand...

Congratulations on the purchase! It is a super light. So does that version have the Li-ion battery? The spot size at 15' sounds about right. By the way, the Ushio needs some adapter parts machined if you are going to try to use it in the Nova.

Maybe you already have some new generation bulb in the NL-75-2. Could you try to take a picture of the bulb through the front glass? And some beamshots of cource if possible. ;) I don't maybe recommend opening the light before you have thought about what you are doing.

Btw, I hope you got that UXL-75XE on ebay, otherwice they are darn expensive...
 
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Hello ez78. One change in the new lamp is the front window. The whole

thing is now threaded on, instead of using screws. I will compare the bulb

with your cad drawing. Does the socket suport the bulb once the front

glass is removed, or does it fall over. I know the focus compression spring

is out of the equation, ounce the front window is removed. If the bulb is

different I will make a cad drawing of it, also I will take a picture of it.

I have a machine shop, and can make any changes necessary, to mount

the new bulb.


Dave:cool:
 
Davekan said:
Hello ez78. One change in the new lamp is the front window. The whole

thing is now threaded on, instead of using screws. I will compare the bulb

with your cad drawing. Does the socket suport the bulb once the front

glass is removed, or does it fall over. I know the focus compression spring

is out of the equation, ounce the front window is removed. If the bulb is

different I will make a cad drawing of it, also I will take a picture of it.

I have a machine shop, and can make any changes necessary, to mount

the new bulb.


Dave:cool:
Click to expand...

Yes the socket will support the bulb, or at least on my version the bulb was sitting quite firmly in the socket when the glass was off. Some force is needed to pull it out. One has to be carefull not to exert any sideways stress on the bulb. And I think if done correctly one should wear protective gloves and glasses because there is the risk of bulb exploding.

Edit: Also record the position of the bulb around its own axis before removing it. I also had to use the X- and Y collimation screws to make the spot symmetrical after the operation but that was actually very fast and easy thing to do.

This post by Ra is informative:
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2184857&postcount=44

Good to hear you have a machine shop, impressive. :)
 
Last edited:
I have heard that with big bulbs, you should were body armour.:eek:oo:

I got the bulb on Ebay. Yes it has lipo battery.

Dave:cool:
 
Very interesting. Larryk, thanks for starting this, and others for the additional info.

I would like to tighten the hotspot on my Supernova too, but I don't think I dare open it up...
 
My Ushio UXL-75XE bulb has arrived. The bulb does not have

the small thin wire around the globe section.


Is this normal ?:shrug:

Thanks Dave
 
Isn't that some kind of safety wire that prevents any arcing from the bulb to it's surroundings. I am not sure how important it is to have it there. Maybe if the electrodes were very badly eroded when the bulb is in the end of it's life then it would offer safe secondary route for the arc. But I think it won't affect how the bulb works.

Anyone have more info on this?
 
Oh yep, I do:

This is called a starting wire: It helps to form a nice electric field around the electrodes to start the arc with the high-voltage pulse.

It is not always needed, but in most cases start-performance is (somewhat..) better.

I encountered a few cases where the performance of the bulb was better without this wire. Maybe this was one of the reasons for Ushio to make this wire easily removable? (UXL-75XE)

Oh, and Dave: If your bulb performes well without it, you don't need to worry about it.


Regards,

Ra.
 
Last edited:
larryk said:
I have a Gen 2 Maxabeam and the later model Supernova with the Li-Ion battery. The Supernova outputs about 10% more lumens than the Maxabeam, but never had the tight spot of the Maxabeam. When shinning at a wall 15 feet away the Supernova's spot was almost twice as large as the Maxabeam's. Both lights set for tightest focus. Today I decided to remove the bulbs and see what, if any differences there are. As you can see in the photos the cathode and anode placement is different. Also the pin on the rear of the Maxabeam's bulb is tapered. I swapped bulbs and holy cow now the Supernova has a tighter spot than the Maxabeam ever had. The only drawback is there is only about 1/4 the flood, but I rarely use the flood option anyway. The Supernova bulb in the Maxabeam had a very large spot at the tightest focus. In the photos the Supernova bulb is always on top.
Click to expand...

Very strange! The bulbs are not significantly different on Optical Arc Dissplacement. (OAD !??)

Did you collimate the bulbs with the X-Y collimation after bulb-swap ??

And did you confirm that the arc's of both bulb's were exactly in focus during these tests?

Otherwise, the only reason I can think of is that the form-imperfections of the SN-reflector exactly compensate for the "OAD" of the Maxabeam-bulb !
BUT THAT'S NEARLY, EXTREMELY IMPOSSIBLE !!

Those reflectors are high-precision parabolics: Only bulbs like the Ushio UXL-75XE (virtually no OAD!) can give ultimate spot performance!


Regards,

Ra.
 
Ra, atleast on the nova the adjustment only moves the bulb maybe 5-6mm. The smallest spot is found in one extreme of the movement, and I have the feeling that is not the optical hot spot yet. The spot would get smaller if the arc could be moved slighty more out and the Maxabeam bulb does that with it's differently located arc.

Edit: In other words I suspect the perfect focus with Nova might actually be found outside the normal bulb movement range and the MB bulb enables you to get there. Maybe this is how they meant it to be, or they settled for good and didn't bother to optimize it to perfection as in the Maxabeam. But there's a fix...

Edit2: The above things of cource only explain why SN spot got tighter, but they don't explain how it could be even tighter than the MB spot.
 
Last edited:
Thanks all for the infofmation. I will mount the bulb so that the arc is

1mm farther forward than the stock bulb. I will be very busy for the

next few days, and will try to get it done as soon as I can. Perhaps,

not untill next week.:ohgeez:


Thanks Dave
 
Well my Nova now has tighter spot than before, which is nice. :party:

I would not have tested this without larry's finding in this thread so thanks.:)

I inserted two M3 washers to the bulb socket. This moves the arc about 1mm outwards in the reflector and makes it possible to get tighter spot.

This is still with the original bulb. Ushio will happen later.

I took before and after shots. Left is before and right is after operation. For both shots I carefully adjusted to the tightest spot possible.

novatuned.jpg
 
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