Super-Bright Luxeon Mod

I never really liked red LED lights all that much, but considering that Lumiled's Red/Orange Lambertian HD emitter is rated at 55 flux (vs. 18 flux for white batwing), I just had to give one a try.

All I can say is WOW This is the absolute BRIGHTEST Luxeon I have ever seen! What's more, is it's only being direct driven on 2 AA batteries!

I built the mod in a Brinkmann Legend 2AA light and direct-drive it with a pair of lithium AA's. The best part of all is that I had a pair of dead lithiums that had about 30 hours in my Luxeon headlight mod (so they were DIM) and they lit the Red/Orange LS up very bright. Lux reading are as follows:

Red/Orange LS w/2 dead AA lithiums - 296 lux
Red/Orange LS w/2 fresh aa lithiums - 508 lux!!

Both readings were taken with a Meterman LM631 light meter @ 1 meter using new style NX05 optics.

I highly recommend this mod, even if you aren't impressed by red LED's, this one will.. The shear volume of light that comes out overcomes the fact that red lights don't illuminate as well. This mod is also going to be great for sucking out the last little bit of life from my used lithium AA batteries from other lights.

Another nice thing, is that since it's underdriven, heatsinking this in a cheaper plastic flaslight should be fairly easy. My brinkmann has yet to show any signs of heat on a well heatsinked light. Future sells this emitter for $7.70

Wow, must try this...

I built the Brinkmann 2AA red/orange for my son on his last birthday (he likes orange). He loves the mod. The strange part is when my mom saw it (in her '70s) she wanted one too!

And they say I'm the flashlight nut!

Does the red/orange high dome have a smooth beam pattern? i read somewhere that the hd beam patterns weren't quite as nice, and you could see the die. for that matter, is there anyone who could sum up the beam quality of various ld and hd leds? thank you.

i just tried to find their website, i've been there before. is it www.futureelectonics.com? because of so, it's under constuction.

I have an Arc SLS red/orange HD and it is certainly a bright tight beam! There are artifacts in the beam as the collimator does focus the die to some extent.

I expect to get a couple of red 5W's next week and I have seen nothing about them on this forum. On top of that, I can't find any luminous output specs on the Lumiled web site; can't find any specs on the red 5W for that matter?

Has anyone used one of these yet? I was told via an e-mail Friday that the 5W white 500 hour units that we can't talk about are now still a couple weeks away due to a change in marketing plans???!? Since I have a mod just waiting for one of the whites and I can't share the results anyway, I might throw the red in, in it's place.

Any experience with the Red 5W's??????

- Don

Future Electronics.

i agree mral, there site was very difficult to use.

future electonics still comes up as under construction, and future active catalog comes up as: page cannot be displayed...

Here is the Luxeon page. You can use the Lumiled part-numbers to do a search...

Strange that you get that message... Anybody any ideas?
Can't help you here, CSI is about to start...

well bart, guess what happens when i clicked that?

HTTP/1.1 404 Object Not Found

that just shows up on the page...

The internet can be a strange place... I know I can't play Reflections , for some reason that just does not work for me.

I can get to the Lumiled PDF documents no problem. I still haven't seen any indication on the Lumiled site nor their docs about luminous output of the 5W red. Have any of you compared the output of the 1 W's to the 5W's that they do show?

Since the 5W consists of 4 of the 1W dies one would assume a 4:1 increase in luminous output. This makes sense with the cyan 1W compared to the 5W: 30 lumens for the 1W and 120 for the 5W. On the other hand, how do you get from the 1W 18 lumens of the white HD to 120 lumens for the 5W? Perhaps this is part of the problem with the white 5W's?

Anyway, if the 1W red HD is capable of a typical lumen output of 44, I reckon a 5W red HD will be one bright SOB! 172 lumens? Wow! A week ago when I asked about stock on 5W red emitters, Future had them. I hope this was still the case on Friday when I decided to order via e-mail...........

Originally posted by McGizmo:
A week ago when I asked about stock on 5W red emitters, Future had them. I hope this was still the case on Friday when I decided to order via e-mail...........

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">??? I haven't seen any indication anywhere that Lumileds makes, or plans to make, a 5W red.

DougS,

Yeah, I know. Perhaps that's why I haven't heard of any mods yet..... None the less, in the latest Future Catalog ( which doesn't list the RB by the way, but does list a blue?):

Red Luxeon 5 Watt emitter- Lambertian Radiation Pattern - LXHL-PR02
web page

I got the description out of a printed Future catalog. The web page gives no description. I think between Future and Lumileds, they have totally confused the product offerings! In the catalog, on the 5W stars, blue, royal blue, cyan, green and white are shown in both side emitter and Lambertian radiation patterns but no red. The red is only shown as a bare emitter and there it is available as stated above in the Lambertian radiation pattern and also in the side emitting; part # LXHL-DR02

It would also seem that there is a price typo on the web site as the red HD is listed at $26.56 yet in the printed catalog, the list is $41.58. The side emitter is priced both places at $41.58.

I'm starting to wish I had ordered a week ago when I was told the parts were in stock! Now I have to wait until monday for confirmation and I'm getting more excited about the mystery 5W red

- Don

Don, that is a mystery. Let us know what you find out. BTW, I cannot get the two links in your last post to go anywhere.

Doug,

I will update if I get a red 5W in my hand. Funny about the links because they work for me but I'm using the underdog: Netscape

Anyway, go to:
http://www.future-active.com/
and type the part number in..........

- Don

[Twilight music]
They work fine for me too, and I'm using IE 6.0, so I'm not sure it's a browser-specific problem.
[/Twilight music]

Originally posted by McGizmo:
Doug,

Anyway, go to:
http://www.future-active.com/
and type the part number in..........

- Don

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Hmmm.., I can't get there that way either. Maybe their site is temporarily down.

Doug,

Maybe you need to dump your cache? It has been working fine all along for me and bouncing boy (Bart)