Not long ago, I did a comparison of my yr2005 triple Luxeon sugar caster headlight with a triple Rebel100 light engine:
You guessed it, the one on the left side is the yr2005 model.
Obviously, I am in urgent need of an upgrade.
So here I go. The sugar castor:
The light engine:
The light engine consists of 3 Rebel100 on PCB, glued to an aluminum disc and focused by a Fraen 10deg triple collimator (initially intended for use with high-dome Luxeon LEDs). The original guides for the LEDs I have cut away so that the collimator comes closer to the Rebels. It's a little tricky to find the focus point, I have carefully aligned LED by LED (one at a time was powered for this purpose). I wasn't fast enough to put glue on all LEDs at the same time, I really had to do one by one as the (Arctic Silver) glue cured fast. Now that they are properly aligned, the optical performance is very nice.
I've secured the guide pins of the collimator with epoxy and added some hot melt around the LEDs.
All LEDs are connected in series and 2x 470uF / 16V capacitors are connected in parallel to the LED string.
More pieces:
The sugar castor I cut by jamming it into a whole saw, then fitting the saw into a stand drill and pressing it down on the drill stand, with a cloth to prevent scratches to the stand and the bottom of the can. While the can was slowly spinning, I pressed an old saw blade against its side and it didn't take a minute to cut the can nicely.
The lens is made from a piece of acrylic glass (I had something lying around but it can be cut from safety goggles). The safest way to cut acrylic glass is to mark the cut with a hot soldering iron (old tip) on both sides of the material, then carefully break away the outside with pliers. The lens is glued to the metal with silicon glue (they call it "liquid rubber", here).
The rivets that secure the lid of the sugar caster are placed at 120deg, so that they are not in the path of the light. I got these rivets from an electronics shop (reichelt.de). The stress relief (nylon) is from the same shop.
Before putting the light engine into the can, I put heatsink compound on the bottom.
There's a reason the mounting bracket is twisted this way. If twisted the other way, it's more likely to scratch the frame of the bike (bike stand mounted on the left side of the bike).
Here's the final assembly:
Eventually I added a piece of inner tube to seal the head.
Not difficult, cheap, serviceable !
You guessed it, the one on the left side is the yr2005 model.
Obviously, I am in urgent need of an upgrade.
So here I go. The sugar castor:
The light engine:
The light engine consists of 3 Rebel100 on PCB, glued to an aluminum disc and focused by a Fraen 10deg triple collimator (initially intended for use with high-dome Luxeon LEDs). The original guides for the LEDs I have cut away so that the collimator comes closer to the Rebels. It's a little tricky to find the focus point, I have carefully aligned LED by LED (one at a time was powered for this purpose). I wasn't fast enough to put glue on all LEDs at the same time, I really had to do one by one as the (Arctic Silver) glue cured fast. Now that they are properly aligned, the optical performance is very nice.
I've secured the guide pins of the collimator with epoxy and added some hot melt around the LEDs.
All LEDs are connected in series and 2x 470uF / 16V capacitors are connected in parallel to the LED string.
More pieces:
The sugar castor I cut by jamming it into a whole saw, then fitting the saw into a stand drill and pressing it down on the drill stand, with a cloth to prevent scratches to the stand and the bottom of the can. While the can was slowly spinning, I pressed an old saw blade against its side and it didn't take a minute to cut the can nicely.
The lens is made from a piece of acrylic glass (I had something lying around but it can be cut from safety goggles). The safest way to cut acrylic glass is to mark the cut with a hot soldering iron (old tip) on both sides of the material, then carefully break away the outside with pliers. The lens is glued to the metal with silicon glue (they call it "liquid rubber", here).
The rivets that secure the lid of the sugar caster are placed at 120deg, so that they are not in the path of the light. I got these rivets from an electronics shop (reichelt.de). The stress relief (nylon) is from the same shop.
Before putting the light engine into the can, I put heatsink compound on the bottom.
There's a reason the mounting bracket is twisted this way. If twisted the other way, it's more likely to scratch the frame of the bike (bike stand mounted on the left side of the bike).
Here's the final assembly:
Eventually I added a piece of inner tube to seal the head.
Not difficult, cheap, serviceable !
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