retro fit led bike light 6 ssc p4's. Beam shots added

[brent878]

Ok i am about to start on my led light build. This will be my first attempt so hopefully everything will work out. Here is what I bought already:

10x seoul P4 Ubin LED's on stars
2x 1000mah buckpcuks
1x b-flex controller
4x 20mm optics, some wide and some spot
2x 50mm optics one wide and one spot. each holds 3 leds
2x old night sun halelogen lights. they are dual setups and hoping to gut and use as a housing.
2x 14.8 li-ion all-battery batteries
1x charger
12" of 2" solid round stock aluminium
12" of 1" round tube aluminium
1x kill switch off of my honda CR250 to use as a switch for the bflex
1x artic silver epoxy
2x frame bags to hold the battries

ok here's the plan but I need your guys expert opinions as this is my first build and right now i am just trying to get all my materials so i can start on it.

My first plan is to take my night sun housing and put the 50mm optics in their at 3 led's on each side to give me a total of 6 led with hopefully over 1000 lumens. I want to run the bflex controller at 1000mah and I can dim it also. The night sun housing is alum and the 2" round stock I bought will be made into a head sink that the leds will attach too and hopefully disperse heat to the outer housing.

plan b is to build a 4 led setup kinda like niterider's setup. With 1" round tube (since the 20mm optics i bought were round) and a 1000mah buckpuck. I still may do this in addition to the 6 led light if the 6 led light works as well as i hope it does.

couple of questions for you experts:

how big do you think i need to make the heat sink inside for the 3 led's? I am not sure how much room i have to work with but what would be a good rule? Or just make it as big as possible?

What size wire's do you guys use? And do you soder everything? Does your wires or soder ever break because of the bouncing? I did some small led's long time ago and i used too small of wires and they eventually broke.

How senstive to water is everything? Do I have to be extra careful to make everything water tight? What if i drill holes in the housing for better heat disipation?

If i want to use a 1000mah buckpuck for the plan b lights on a 3 way switch how do i get it to dim. Can i just put a resistor in it or should i get a 350mah buck puck for the low setting?

Is thier anything I left off my list that I will need? I have a good sodering iron, a drill press, grinder wheel, sander, 240v TIG and am debating weither to buy a lathe for this project. I'll have to see what I can come up with for the heat sink. So I think I have enough tools for the fabbing part.

I'll start posting pics once I get everything in and start on the project. This is probably going to take me a while so i'll update this thread as I go along or have more questions.

night sun:

14.8v batteries:

50mm lens (1 wide, 1 spot):

20mm lens (2 spot, 1 semi wide, 1 wide):

1000mah buckpucks:

souel P4 ubin:

artic silver:

blex:

Aluminium:

 

[yellow]

dont have the data of the driver ready (and dont want to look at them now), I m pretty much certain You are right on them.
If You wnat to run the both heads together, a Sandwich Shoppe Shark with its Remora could give You an easy three-level output.

water/elements: if any debrit/water/... is able to get on the back side of the optics (= if they are not COMPLETELY sealed), they are wasted. Also dont ever touch the back side!

Kick the wide optics (maybe use one, but no more), set the focused ones a bit off the main angle. Much brighter light than with wider optics (better if You would change to reflectors; cheap with the SSC, as You could use IMS ones. But You have the optics already, so ...)

I absolutely not like the housing here, but that does not count. Use a THICK sink, as thick as You have space (I am about to do a same thing. 7-10 mm is what I am thinking now). Make the sink round and press fit into the housing. Also good if it touches the back of it
Another idea were to use the heads of Maglites, they also are Your 50 mms and they are sealed already + perfectly easy to disasseble + feature very much ready-made custom parts + perfect seats fot the heatsink and even ready made screw-in-original-treads sinks. Cheaper than a lathe

use the Arctic, but kick it the next time. Better: thermal grease on the slug/star, press on till it holds, then use normal epoxy glue to fix (Star: use screws). If used thin the epoxy works the same as Arctic

PS: imho this will be too bright

 

[brent878]

Re: retro fit led bike light 6 ssc p4's?

It might be too bright but we'll see hehe. My holgen setup was good until everyone started buying HID bike lights. If I am alone then I am fine but if someone gets behind me my shadow forms right in front of me and i can't see that spot becuase there light is so much brigher than mine. So i have to go at least as bright as thier lights or better yet make them have a shadow on thier $400 lights.

Thanks for the info on the water. I was afraid of that but wasn't too sure how touchy LED's are to water. So i will be extra careful with them.

For bike lights you want more of a flood than you would want vs a flash light. Now since I haven't played with LED's before I don't know what the beam pattern is like and what will work best for my situation. But i figured it would be good to get some of each and I can see how effective they work for me and if I need to order more or different ones I can do so. I'll look into reflectors as well. The optics and reflectors don't cost that much and should be easy to change later on.

I have seen some of the mag light modified lights and they don't look bad. I just don't like how they look mounted to the bike. These tuck nicely under my bars and you don't even notice them on the bike unlike 90% of bike lights that sit ontop of the bars. That was the main reason for using these housing as I have seen alot of lights get broken or scratched during crashes and these have served me well for the past 15 years with out a scratch on them from hitting the ground.

And i'll keep that thermal grease/ normal epoxy in mind for any other builds. This is the first i have heard about that method other wise i probalby would have went that route as I have epoxy and thermal grease already.

Thanks for all the info yellow. I hope to start working on the heat sink this friday.

Another question. If i want to maximize the heat sink should I consider putting the controller outside of the housing or maybe with the battery? This would give me more room inside to make a bigger heat sink and have less wires running in and out. I am going to pull the lights apart tonight and test fit the 50mm optics inside to see how much room behind them i will have for a heat sink. And also to see if the bflex will fit inside also.

Also someone on mtbr suggested i use 20-24awg wire. Does this also sound right to everyone here?

 

[yellow]

I forgot:

CHECK THE STARS!!
There have been some shown here, that were mounted wrong ways (that cutout has to be on the "-" side) and with an air gap between the Star and the emitter (I personally had such one).
When firing one of these, the will get killed instantly (reverse voltage) or within few time (overheating)

Maybe I exaggerated on the sink. 5-7 mm might be enough (I tend to do more than is necessary to have my leds as cool as possible).
If the sink is a press fit into the housing, place the circuit behind, the cooling of the flowing air should be enough
(thats the advantage of the Mag-heads, the sink touches the sides and the flat part at the end to give heat away but in the middle there is still enough room left to insert circuit, connectors and switches)

 

[sortafast]

Re: retro fit led bike light 6 ssc p4's?

I would tend to be of the mindset that 10 SSC P4's would be a bit overkill, no offense or anything. I have been playing around with bike lights for a little while, and have done supprisingly well with just 1 light. Compared to my nite hawk 10w halogen with a new bulb, my edison LED light running at 750mA is insanely brighter. With a 10 emitter set up you be looking at a lot of weight added to your ride. I bet if you just kept to modding your existing housings to run 6 of the P4's you should be in really really good shape. And I second what Yellow said, ditch the wide optics for the 20mm set up if you plan on using them as well. I switched from the med to the narrow Kahtod optics, and the narrow has a much better beam and condenses the light a lot better. With the wider angle, the light just seemed dimmer and didnt have nearly the throw I wanted.

 

[brent878]

Re: retro fit led bike light 6 ssc p4's?

thanks for your replies. My plan is to use the 6 on one bike and i'll build the 4 for my other bike or to keep as a spare. Ya i am not going to run all 10 on a single bike.

I'll check the stars to make sure they are correct before firing them up. thanks for the tip as I would have never checked them if you had not told me.

And i'll keep that in mind sortafast about the wide angle 20mm. I might just order some new ones now so when i build that one I will have a few to play around with.

Thanks for all this great info, saves me from alot of expensive R&D.

 

[gandbag]

Re: retro fit led bike light 6 ssc p4's?

10 high power LEDs wasn't too much for this guy:
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=158356

 

[brent878]

Re: retro fit led bike light 6 ssc p4's?

I have a question. If i want to run the 1000mah buckpuck and also want a low setting using a resister at like half or 350 mah who size would i use?

It will be powering 3 led's in series from a 14.8v li-ion battery. And where would i install the resister at? It will be from a 3-way toggle switch.

 

[AndyTiedye]

Re: retro fit led bike light 6 ssc p4's?

Added to Bike Light Thread Links (also sorted by topic)

 

[brent878]

Re: retro fit led bike light 6 ssc p4's?

well finally got her working, yay :thumbsup: Got her done at like midnight last night and going to try her out tonight and see how she does. Did a quick test in the backyard and it seems pretty bright but its hard to compare with no other bike lights. I didn't bother taking beam shots becuase i want another bike light to show so you can compare. But the beam was almost perfect, with the wide angle and the spot you don't really see a bight spot. Its bright in the middle and just kinda fades out with lots of light everywhere. The real test will be tonight as i am going with my dad who uses a nightrider HID so i will really be able to tell how mine holds up. And hopefully I won't have any mechanical problems with the light. It was a really tight fit. I went with the 2 1000mah buckpucks, one for each set of led's. Low is just the 3 led's on wide angle and high is all 6 led's on.
Here are the pics:
here is the cuts i made for the heat sinks:

here is the finished heat sinks (actually the 2nd set. I made the first set too small and had to start over):

lens on the heat sink:

led's expoxied onto the heat sinks and wired. I should have used smaller wires to make it easier to work with:

and the finished product:

The little red and black wires you see by the battery plug are for my tail light. I have a custom led tail light in my seat but i am going to rewire it so that's what those are for if your wondering.
I tested out the bflex with this setup and i would have to run the lights at 500mah to get it to work so i opted to go with the 1000mah buckpucks to see how i would like it. I am planning on doing another set when i get all the bugs worked out with this one and use the bflex or dual bflex's if I think that 1000mah is going to be needed.
Tell me what you think.

 

[brent878]

Re: retro fit led bike light 6 ssc p4's?

Here are some beam shots. I took shots against a NiteRider blow torch HID head light. Mine is the scc P4's running at 1000mah.


Test 1:


Control, no lights on:
12mm, daylight WB, F11, 15", ISO100, Nikon D80

HID light:
12mm, daylight WB, F11, 15", ISO100, Nikon D80

My LED light Flood (3 led's)
12mm, daylight WB, F11, 15", ISO100, Nikon D80

My LED light spot (3 led's)
12mm, daylight WB, F11, 15", ISO100, Nikon D80

My LED light high (6 led's)
12mm, daylight WB, F11, 15", ISO100, Nikon D80

Test 2, I made a longer exposure so you could see more of the spill of the light as it goes super wide and lights everything up.


Control, no lights:
12mm, daylight WB, F6.3, 15", ISO100, Nikon D80

HID light:
12mm, daylight WB, F6.3, 15", ISO100, Nikon D80

my led light flood (3 led's):
12mm, daylight WB, F6.3, 15", ISO100, Nikon D80

my led light spot (3 led's):
12mm, daylight WB, F6.3, 15", ISO100, Nikon D80

my led light HIGH (6 led's):
12mm, daylight WB, F6.3, 15", ISO100, Nikon D80

 

[sortafast]

Impressive grasshopper.

 

[missionaryman]

wow that is fantastic output - great work.

 

[Lazgoat]

Fantastic lights! I'm just curious though on how hot the lamps get as I'm guessing the LED sinks are touching the cans to dissipate the heat? I'd be interested to see your wiring if you dont mind as I have a very similar mod planned.

 

[kurni]

Re: retro fit led bike light 6 ssc p4's?

Very nice, congrats! How is buckpuck? Do you have any problem with it e.g. flicker etc?

 

[Krit]

Wow,,,, It's very cool bright. Good Job..