I got my first metal lathe for Xmas and have been turning, facing, parting, and threading like a mad man, lots of mistakes but I still have all of my fingers. I was so proud of my first washer, I framed it :)
This last week I spent a few hours and finally built something useful!
Below are the pieces and parts (The US $Quarter is just for size reference)
the front of the light is threaded at 36TPI... just because I could ;-)
The back of the lighthead is threaded at 18TPI to match my cable gland.
I ended up using a larger CG then I liked but it allowed me to have room for the driver and internal threading.
I bored a flat bottom hole that's 22mm in diameter and 12mm deep,
then at 5.5mm depth I widened the bore to 25mm creating a ledge for the lense to rest on an oring.
The wall seperating the front and rear bore holes is around 10mm thick.
The housing is a total of 32mm in diameter x 36mm length (excluding the Cablegland)
This is the head put together.
The used a bead of clear RTV silicone sealant to seal the lense and the CableGland.
The yellow tape is "Might Fix" silicone wrap which is serving two functions:
* thickening the cable so the CG grips better
* Acting as reinforcement / strain relief
As a quick test I dropped the head into a fish tank for 4 hours without a hickup...
beam angle is 70 degrees (This is without any optics, only a 5mm WINDOW is being used for this round. When Ledil final releases the IRIS optics for the XM-L I'll worry more about the effiecency of the beam, for now... it's bright!)
For those wondering,
Next skills to learn: Anodizing and Milling (Just got the milling attachment for my lathe!)
Changes to consider for future builds:
This last week I spent a few hours and finally built something useful!
Below are the pieces and parts (The US $Quarter is just for size reference)
the front of the light is threaded at 36TPI... just because I could ;-)
The back of the lighthead is threaded at 18TPI to match my cable gland.
I ended up using a larger CG then I liked but it allowed me to have room for the driver and internal threading.
I bored a flat bottom hole that's 22mm in diameter and 12mm deep,
then at 5.5mm depth I widened the bore to 25mm creating a ledge for the lense to rest on an oring.
The wall seperating the front and rear bore holes is around 10mm thick.
The housing is a total of 32mm in diameter x 36mm length (excluding the Cablegland)
This is the head put together.
The used a bead of clear RTV silicone sealant to seal the lense and the CableGland.
The yellow tape is "Might Fix" silicone wrap which is serving two functions:
* thickening the cable so the CG grips better
* Acting as reinforcement / strain relief
As a quick test I dropped the head into a fish tank for 4 hours without a hickup...
beam angle is 70 degrees (This is without any optics, only a 5mm WINDOW is being used for this round. When Ledil final releases the IRIS optics for the XM-L I'll worry more about the effiecency of the beam, for now... it's bright!)
For those wondering,
- Battery pack is 4 x 18650s in parallel
- Driver = LFlex from taskled
- Switch = Hallsw from taskled
- Canister will be the OMS canister
- out of the tank it hit thermal shutdown in about 30 seconds
- in the tank it ran for 3 hours before I turned it off and went to bed
Next skills to learn: Anodizing and Milling (Just got the milling attachment for my lathe!)
Changes to consider for future builds:
- Instead of a single piece of aluminum, use a core/shell approach as it will make wiring easier.
- Needs optics!!!
- Black silicone wrap please!
- a 40mm diameter would be acceptable if I used a 3up LED configuration... Cutter Electornics has the XM-L versions.
- Start thinking non-cabled designs with only 2 x 18650s
