The Mad Mag Hotwire Hotrod!

Hi All,

Here's my Mad Mag Hotwire Hotrod.

Here's how we start...

1. The ingredients...


2. The Bulb. After searching around the limited Osram bulbs in Hong Kong I finally decided on the 50W Osram MR16 Decostar 4687D. Stumbled across it and thought, that bulb looks like a small filament. A few minutes on the Dremel and I had the bulb out.


3, The Bulb. For comparision, here's the bulb next to the standard Osram 50W. Sorry I've since blown this bulb so dont know the model number. The 46870 bulb has a shorter and tighter filament. Still haven't blown it yet. Why a 50W bulb? It's drawing 5Amps at around 19Volts, batteries fresh off the charger. That's 95W! And what I've found is that above this people you want to show off to get overstimulated, "err... OK, another extremely bright light..". What they normally ask for after this is "can it reach to the other side of this valley?" and the answer is "er...no because this is more of a flood type light..... But here's my 35W HID mod that can reach there!!"


4. The Wiring. I took a Kiu socket, a 10A switch, some lengths of Silicone 15A wire, and a RC Battery socket. All connections crimped, apart from the switch which I opened up and had to solder the wires directly to the terminals. I believe this may be one of the "least resistance" solutions I've seen.


5. The Mag rear cap. I had this turned down to allow more space in the battery compartment.


6. The Battery pack. 16 IB1400's in a hand made pack. No soldering, just the ends screwed tight. Allows pack to be easily dismantled and individual cells to be checked regularly.


7. The Battery Pack. Another side shot. Even though I have an E-Station charger to charge this pack, I've used the Energizer 15mins charger with spacers and that works great.


8. Final touches are Borofloat lens and my cut down G&P Scorpion R500 reflector and here's the final product.


What's that I hear you say? "That's just a boring old Mag mod!"


OK, as one of the UK TV programs "Stars in their eyes" used to say....


Drum roll................




Tonight the Boring Mag is.....




The Mad Mag Hotwire Hotrod!!!!


:rock::rock::rock:








Thanks for looking.

Bogus.

:rock::rock::rock::rock:
beautiful mod! excellent pics :goodjob: :kewlpics:

:bow: :bow: :bow:

how much?
, actually, i dont want to know...:laughing:

jo0 4r3 $o 1337!! j0o R0x0r3z!

Great job. Do you have a comparison beamshot with a Mag85 or some other well-known Mag mod?

Thanks,
ernest

Nice! We neeed some beamshots of that in action!

What size host is that? 3D/4D?

Nice job! I would like to see more pictures of the battery pack with the batteries removed if possible. I count 14 cells rather than 16. Was it a typo error in your post?

Thanks for all the replies.

Illum, The cost of parts to make light totalled around USD130.00. But that doesn't include the blown bulbs and extra parts etc used during experimentation.


Majr and Vacuum3D I'll try to get some beam shots in the near future.

Everydog, Yes you're right! It is only 14 cells. I did extend the holder at one time to hold 16 cells. Total 22.4V off the charger. Tested with a Philips 15V 150W bulb, just managed to measure the current at about 11A and voltage of around 18V before another Here's some pics of the battery pack dismantled:








I had to beef up the rear connection plate with some solder wick when I accidentally shorted the pack and suddenly there was this smell of burning.

The side copper/brass rods are acutally PCB spacers. I bought a load of different lengths and mixed and matched and screwed them together until I got the right length. They're only part of the mechanical assembly. There's no current being passed through them.

I'll get the battery pack charged up tonight and take some better readings.

Cheers,

Bogus.

with 16 cells.. you could be running the IRC lamps.. 35% more runtime for same amt of light... i use 16 IB1400 cells in my IRC mod.. with a driver to hold the output constant when the cells are freshly charged.. it's an unbeatable light.

I love the switch solution it's cute with the cover and the on/off label.. good fun.

-awr

AWR - which IRC bulb do you use and what run times do you get with your hotdriver? Unfortunately IRC bulbs are not available in Hong Kong and since my Mag is not tri bored I can only get a maximum of 14 cells into a 3D body.


Anyway, did some fresh readings last night with a straight off the charger battery pack and got these results:

1. Off the charger voltage - 19.6V - exactly 1.4V per cell
2. On load current draw - 5.2A, voltage 18.4V. That's still just over 1.3V per cell and giving me a whopping 95W!!!

Obviously even as I was doing the measurements the values were decreasing rapidly. But I estimate that the voltage should level out at 16.8V and 5A so still giving me 84W!

Here're some beam shots. I'm still very new to taking beam shots. I use a digital camera set to ISO80, -2.0 exposure, fixed white balance and 1m from the wall. Other lights are a G&P R500 and my Mag74 LE with LOP reflector:

1. MagHotrod.


2. L to R, Mag74LE, G&P R500


3. L to R, Mag74LE, MagHotrod, G&P R500


4. Ceiling Bounce - Mag74LE


5. Ceiling Bounce - MagHotrod


Cheers,

Bogus.

damn, NICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! great job!!!!

IRC lamps are not available anywhere in north america either.. i buy them from slovania!.. they ship anywhere.

with 14cells.. the light will just be starting to look nice n white.. i wasn't happy with 18V.. but 18.5 is right where they are holy cow nice.. 19V with the lower wattage bulbs is very nice.

I mis-counted i thought you had 2 rows of 8.. well with 14 cells you can certainly get away with direct drive.. the numbers look like this:

783, 1407, 1951, 2649 Lumen
28.5, 36.3, 37.3, 38.4 L/W
2.54, 3.59, 4.85, 6.40 Amp.

These are figures for 16.6V.

With my solution (16 cells regulated).. the runtimes are aprox. 26, 19, 14, 10 minutes.. those are all figures for 25, 35, 50, 65W lamps.

-awr

Thanks for the picutures. Beam pattern looks real nice.

ernest

Thanks Bogus for the additional pictures!:goodjob:

Is it even possible to fit 3 wide IB1400's in a tribored mag? Real nice light by way.

IB1400s are the same diameter as the '17xxx' LiON or CR123s.. so yes of course they fit great in a tri-bore.. that's how i fit 16+2 spacers into a 2D light! :-D (well plus a fair amount of luck and ingenuity.. it's an extremely tight fit.. let's just say there are no springs in the design!).

-awr

Now i see where the butchered G&P R500 reflector went to . Nice work Bogus and nice light.

andrewwynn said:

IB1400s are the same diameter as the '17xxx' LiON or CR123s.. so yes of course they fit great in a tri-bore.. that's how i fit 16+2 spacers into a 2D light! :-D (well plus a fair amount of luck and ingenuity.. it's an extremely tight fit.. let's just say there are no springs in the design!).

-awr

Click to expand...

Well that's just dang awesome. I have a 3d mag host that has had the entire inside lip removed, not just bored channels. I need to take some measurements and see if I can put it to use. If I had a custom made shrinkwrapped pack that was soldered, would the current melt the solder tabs joining the batteries on 16 cells or more?

i don't think a 'full bore' can be big enough to host 17mm cells x 3.. it cuts into the threads.. meaning you'd not be able to thread on the tailcap anymore with a single bore solution. soldered packs are lower resistance so no.. you don't have to worry about solder tabs melting.

-awr

Thanks for the info Andrew, I was unsure about that and didnt realize that the boring for a full bore was not as deep as the channels would be. I picked up the host in the buy/sell area a few months ago and have not had a 3 bore yet for comparison. Your battery pack solution is looking real nice. I look forward to buying one when they are available.

the full-bore solution is great for quad-AA.. with the second release of smartpak.. 4AA>D you can fit 12AA into that light you are describing no problemo.. you can make a 7.2V or 14.4V pack with 12AAs.

the smartpak boards come in tomorrow.. unless there is a fabrication or design flaw the first working models will be operational this weekend.

-awr