NightSword - Portable Mega Light Idea Revisited

[get-lit]

A few years ago I've reviewed the latest lamps with the highest luminance in cd/cm^2 to find one that is capable of the most throw for a new portable mega light. I was most impressed with Ra's Maxablaster with a lamp having a luminance of 170,000 cd/cm^2. But I felt it could be improved because it only produced 4,000 lumen, and almost half that was not utilized because of the reflector required to handle the high amount of UV from that lamp. The reflector absorbed much of the visible light and the visible light it did produce also had poor color rendition. The lamp life lasted only a few hundred hours as well.

Here is a past thread from the last time I considered this a few years back...
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=149969

Back then I settled on the Osram XBO 500W/RC OFR lamp with a luminance of 260,000 cd/cm^2 but it soon became unavailable and I gave up for a while to wait for UHP lamps to mature. And now a few years later, we have lots of them for DLP projectors. One lamp series in particular is the Osram P-VIP 100-120/1.0 P22h DLP Lamp with 200,000 cd/cm^2. The lamp would have to be separated from it's reflector to use a high grade 9" reflector and a Thor host. It has excellent color rendition since it's for projectors, and the lamp itself produces roughly a nominal 7,000 lumen. With a lamp life of around 6000 to 8000 hours, it could possibly be doubled to 240 watts and run for 500 hours with a luminance of 400,000 cd/cm^2 and 14,000 lumen. That is the 4 times the luminance of the Osram XBO 7000 Watt! Since it's the luminance that determines the throw potential, this could be one heck of a light. The lamp is only $110.

Anyone have any other considerations?

 

[Patriot]

Re: New Portable Mega Light Idea Revisited

Do these not count?

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=198582

 

[get-lit]

Re: New Portable Mega Light Idea Revisited

Yes they all count and they all put out gobs of light in lumens, but I've always been interested in making the ultimate throw king - something that can out-throw everything else even if it has very meager spill. Among those, the Maxablaster has the most throw but it can be made even better with newer lamps. I want candlepower baby and that's all!

 

[Patriot]

Re: New Portable Mega Light Idea Revisited

Unless I'm mistaken, it seems that all of these lamps are long-arc technology which wouldn't provide any throw advantage beyond the mega lights in the previous link. All I could find out about them is they they use mainly mercury gas. Also, I wasn't quite sure by what you meant by "double the wattage." Are you talking about using a ballast that instead of providing the specified 110 watts to the bulb, that a ballast is used to provide 240 watts to it instead? If that's the case, I'm not sure how the bulb would respond to that but usually the pressures would be too high. I know that some bulbs like the DL50 Fatboy can be driven at 85+W, well beyond it's 50W rating but it's an unusually robust bulb.

Would this Osram P-VIP 100-120/1.0 P22h really provide any advantage beyond EZ78's 400W Thor HID mentioned before?

Thanks.

 

[get-lit]

Re: New Portable Mega Light Idea Revisited

As you can see from the original discussion, I've been waiting for this UHP tech to mature for a long time. The Osram P-VIP lamps are indeed very short arc. Also the arc gap is not the only thing that determines average luminance. For instance, the luminance from Philips D2S bulbs covers a much larger area than just between the arc gap. For a given arc gap, higher pressures and certain gasses greatly reduce the luminance area and increase the average luminance that can be tightly collimated into candlepower. With a point source light, the amount of candlepower is determined by the amount of light that can be condensed into the smallest point source, and the ability of a quality parabolic reflector to collimate that point source into parallel light.

Again, the Osram P-VIP 100-120/1.0 lamp has a nominal luminance of 200,000 cd/cm^2 which is ten times the luminance of the Osram XBO 150W short arc lamp and also twice the luminance of the Osram XBO 7,000W short arc lamp!

Besides two very specialized lamps, there are no other lamps I have found with nearly anything close to the luminance of the Osram P-VIP 120. Among the only two specialized that do, one no longer exists (Osram XBO 500W/RC OFR already discussed) and the other (used in the Maxablaster) is *very* inefficient, short-lived, produces more UV than visible light, and has to be used with an inefficient reflector.

I agree that it's really pushing it to double the power to the lamp, even if it's nominal power is somewhat underrated. If the DL50 can be driven another 70%, it is surely feasible to drive the Osram P-VIP 120 50% more to 180W with an output of 10,500 lumen and an average luminance of 300,000 cd/cm^2. That by far exceeds even any specialized short arc, high luminance lamps available today.

Although the Par64 400W Thor HID puts out a lot of light, it's luminance is nowhere near this league. I doubt it's even 20,000 cd/cm^2. It can't produce the kind of tightly collimated light that I'm trying to achieve in order to make candle power. If you look at the beam shot, you can see how the light from the Par64 400W Thor HID is not tightly collimated like the Maxablaster's light...

400 HID Thor

Ra's Maxblaster

At 3.5 Miles...

 

[get-lit]

Re: New Portable Mega Light Idea Revisited

As a side note, the reason I prefer a small powerful beam over a tons of light with lots of spill is because when shining the light at distance, spill light can obscure your acuity of the illuminated target object at distance. I really only want the distant target object illuminated so that it's reflected light is most easily seen without being washed out by any spill light.

Also, I'd really like to know what the luminance values are for the higher wattage Osram P-VIP lamps. Only the 120W version is listed at 200,000 cd/cm^2. It would be great if a 300W+ lamp had the nearly the same or (cross my fingers) more luminance, but I kind of doubt it because their luminance would be advertised instead of the 120W version. But just maybe.

Anyone know of a way to find out other than buying them all?

 

[Patriot]

Re: New Portable Mega Light Idea Revisited

Thanks for the explanation get-lit. That looks like an amazing lamp!

 

[get-lit]

Re: New Portable Mega Light Idea Revisited

My pleasure. If it's as successful as I anticipate, maybe I'll call it the NightSword :rock:

 

[ez78]

Go for it man! I'd love to see Maxablaster get spanked.

So, do you know if the bulb can be removed from the reflector without breaking it, or is there a version without the reflector also? Do you have access to machining services? I think you would have to design and build your own bulb base with very precise three-axial adjustments like in the MB. Hmm, then the ballast, I quess you could rip one out of a projector. This kind of project takes very much time and effort for sure.

 

[get-lit]

You could pick up an older used projector that is compatible with this lamp for around $100, but the igniter would require AC to function so a separate DC-powered igniter would have to be purchased.

For ultimate portability and efficiency, it may be a lot better to do away with getting a projector and make a li-poly battery pack that closely matches the lamps operating voltage of 65 volts, get an efficient DC current-limiting voltage regulator circuit as the power supply, and then get a DC powered igniter with a voltage of 15kV-18kV. The power supply would regulate current to 1.85A and voltage to 65V for nominal power with a 6,000 hour lamp life and 2.75A for 50% overdriven power.

The power supply could be cheap relatively speaking since 200W is pretty low for a short arc lamp. Nothing like what they cost for the bigger ones like 5000W.

I think the most difficult part would be making a lamp base to secure the lamp and micro-align it. It would need to be able to make micrometer adjustments.

As far as the lamp itself, I do not know much about it except that it's got the kind of luminance I want and it also happens to be efficient in the visible light spectrum and lasts a whopping 6,000 hours. With all those pluses, there's got to be a way to extract the reflector. It would be nice if the lamp's reflector is a separate piece that can be easily removed or cut away, but I really don't know. It may need some delicate dremel service.

I actually have too many other things going on to pursue this now, and that's part of the reason why I'm outlining the plans here, as I would like to enable anyone else to give it a shot.

 

[Juggernaut]

Ummmm… This would be the most EPIC light ever….. Normally one tries to make comparison about stuff like this, like that light would be a Bugatti veyron if it was a car but…..That's not right. Perhaps I'm to much of a Flashaholic but if this light works out like it should I would rather have the Night Sward over a real Bugatti veyron! In fact I can't think of much that would be more impressive then a flashlight that can hit stuff at 12+ miles! Talk about an empowering felling:devil:. You could point this thing off Cape Cod and F-ing hit Nantucket island! People would literally **** themselves their! You could hit South America from Aruba!

 

[get-lit]

HOLY SCARY!!! UHP Lamps are pressurized to around 3000 PSI in!!! oo: And I thought the Osram Xenon XBO lamps were dangerous. The pressure is primarily used to enable smaller the arc with higher average luminance.

For anyone that wants to work with one of these, safety must be the primary concern. Definitely no cheap plastic reflectors here!

 

[get-lit]

...In fact I can't think of much that would be more impressive then a flashlight that can hit stuff at 12+ miles!...

Although it may put out 4 times the lumen of the Maxablaster when considering reflector efficiency, the lamp only has 15% more average luminance than the Maxablaster's lamp. With the Maxablaster being effective to 3.5 miles, I don't suspect that this new light will quite reach 5 miles. It's the luminance that mostly determines the throw. All of the additional lumen will only better illuminate within that range.

 

[Juggernaut]

Although it may put out 4 times the lumen of the Maxablaster when considering reflector efficiency, the lamp only has 15% more average luminance than the Maxablaster's lamp. With the Maxablaster being effective to 3.5 miles, I don't suspect that this new light will quite reach 5 miles. It's the luminance that mostly determines the throw. All of the additional lumen will only better illuminate within that range.

Oh no, a light that can only hit stuff 5 Miles away! Still good enough for me:twothumbs. You could still hit Martha's vineyard from cap code.

 

[SunFire900]

Yeah, but you couldn't tell the difference between a semi and a Smart Car at that distance! Very cool, though.

 

[get-lit]

Since the pressures of these lamps is super high, I decided I wouldn't overdrive these lamps +50%. I'd stick with +25% or more likely +20%. So the revised estimated overdriven specs would be 8400 lumen and 240,000 cd/cm^2 at 145W.

Also, I'm reconsidering which lamp variant to use because the 120W with 200,000 cd/cm^2 luminance may be past the point of diminishing returns of the compromise between luminance and lumen. Heck even the most bad azz Xenon 10,000 Watt search lights have a luminance of half that.

The question I find myself asking is, would I prefer to have a fair amount of light that extends way beyond practicality, or a TON more light that extends not as far but still beyond practicality?

With this question in mind, here's the other lamp I'm considering...

OSRAM VIP R 273/45 4008321039989

Nominal Specs:
270W
17,000 lm
100,000 cd/cm2
1000 hours

Estimated +20% overdriven specs:
325W
120,000 cd/cm2
20,400 lm
600 Hours

That's 2.4 times the amount of light than the overdriven 120W, with a potential throw distance still greater than the XBO 10,000W. Basically, it's a LOT more light than the 120W while still throwing beyond a practical distance. Look at the specs of all the XBO search lamps...
http://www.msscientific.de/xenon_lamps.pdf

You can see that the overdriven OSRAM VIP R 273/45 has more lumen than the XBO 700W and more luminance than the XBO 8000W. I'd say it's a great compromise over the 120W VIP. Any thoughts?

 

[ez78]

I would not want to start this kind of project with a dremel job. The OSRAM VIP R 273/45 comes with a reflector but there should also be a version without reflector the VIP S 273/26. Finding a good lamp is still kind of easy compared to the design work needed to put the optics and mechanical/electrical stuff together. Any idea yet which reflector you might use?

 

[get-lit]

Thanks so much for that info! That lamp is exactly what is needed! There is very little info out there on that particular lamp but here's a google translation of some very useful specs...

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lampa28.ru%2Fosram%2FVIP.htm&lp=ru_en&.intl=us&fr=yfp-t-501

Hidden in that link is a special surprise... the most interesting lamp I've yet seen, the VIP S 1200/41 with a nominal 110,000 cd/cm^2 average luminance and 110,000 lumen. It's luminous efficacy is 92 lumen/W!!! That's more light than the XBO 2500W with the average luminance matching the XBO 8000W. With a luminous efficacy of 92, it wouldn't produce as much heat as most other lower watt solutions. This is the only lamp I've seen that doesn't sacrifice efficiency for luminance. If something were to be made with this lamp, it would trump everything period.

Back to reality for now. Regarding the reflector, I would have to re-check my old notes. I had a particular reflector planned before from a scientific optical company, maybe Melles Griot but I'm unsure at the moment. In order to take full advantage of the power of these luminance values, the reflector could not be compromised. As one would guess that translates into money. Expect to pay well over $400 for the reflector alone.

 

[get-lit]

Hmm, one could get 1480 watt hours with just two TP5000-10SXV Li-Pos, which would be enough to power the VIP S 1200/41 and ballast for 15 minutes...
http://thunderpowerrc.com/html/extreme-V2.html

 

[get-lit]

Time to review ballast options. The simplest would be a current limiting DC/DC converter and an igniter circuit. I was also concerned that these might require alternating current, and now I see that they do. I'm not sure of the alternating frequency they require. I had read that feeding DC power to UHP lamps made for AC only has a minor affect on lamp life, but that needs to be looked into as well.