EMPOWERTORCH
Enlightened
Today I went to a "car-boot-sale" which is an excellent place to hunt down old torches crying out to be given a new lease of life with an LED conversion. Some old 1960's models there. My most recent non-working acquisitions are a 5 cell Tandy Corp. torch which when filled with duracells could be percieved as some sort of self-defence weapon! All for the princely sum of 50p!
I also have a huge SLA powered halogen torch which I might "Luxeonise" with a 5W cyan luxeon later this year.
I intend to either replace the bulb in the Tandy with a cluster bulb or build a large LED array into the torch head using 20 or 30 high brightness Nichia green or cyan LED's each running at about 20 mA. This should create a very bright lightsource indeed. Could such a conversion outshine a Luxeon, I wonder? With the latest Nichia's putting out 20000 or more mcd, this would presumably provide 400000 mcd! I'll have to save up for the Nichia's though, unless I can get some surplus LED's from a fellow (UK) torchaholic at a favorable rate. Any idea how much life I would get out of a set of Duracells?
I also have a huge SLA powered halogen torch which I might "Luxeonise" with a 5W cyan luxeon later this year.
I intend to either replace the bulb in the Tandy with a cluster bulb or build a large LED array into the torch head using 20 or 30 high brightness Nichia green or cyan LED's each running at about 20 mA. This should create a very bright lightsource indeed. Could such a conversion outshine a Luxeon, I wonder? With the latest Nichia's putting out 20000 or more mcd, this would presumably provide 400000 mcd! I'll have to save up for the Nichia's though, unless I can get some surplus LED's from a fellow (UK) torchaholic at a favorable rate. Any idea how much life I would get out of a set of Duracells?
