Seoul + glow powder?

A weird idea just came to my mind: Seoul P4 led dome is sticky which is usually seen as nuisance... but how about dipping it into glow powder just before installing it to a flashlight? Like that you would get nice glow effect with minimal effort (of course sacrificing some throw). Has anyone tried this? Comments?

-N

Nereus said:

A weird idea just came to my mind: Seoul P4 led dome is sticky which is usually seen as nuisance... but how about dipping it into glow powder just before installing it to a flashlight?

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You'd be completely blocking the normal light emission pattern is my guess.

greenLED said:

You'd be completely blocking the normal light emission pattern is my guess.

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Agree, that's why some throw would almost certainly be sacrified. I guess I have to try this to see the results.

-N

sounds like a good idea to me! You might be able to mask off the center with a straw... use a brush to apply some powder to the edge of the dome. Reflectors reflect from the focal point, so this would be the only way to have the GID reflect thruout the reflector. A sweet effect.

I added a significant amount of GID to my Streamlight Jr. It sure does glow bright, but probably loses some throw. Not that I care.

It would be like painting a lightglobe. Prety but futile

What about painting the ring on the sides and bottom ?

bombelman said:

What about painting the ring on the sides and bottom ?

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I've done that with Lux emitters. If you add several coats to the slug, it charges up pretty and glows well, despite the black "background".

As long as the paint you're adding doesn't interfere with the "real estate" of your light (such as adding height to the pill and thereby messing up your ground path), you'll be fine.

I had to try my idea to see how it works... First, some strontium aluminate green glow powder and a seoul "test mule" are needed:



Seoul buried to glow powder:



After gently blowing, this is what is remaining of the glow powder. You can see the individual glow powder flakes. They are spread quite unevenly:



The glow effect in a textured McR20 reflector:



Same reflector, a bit different angle:



The glow effect in a smooth IMS20 reflector:



Same reflector, a bit different angle:



I have a bit mixed feelings about this technique... It works and you can create very easily and quickly glow effect to your flashlight. Furthermore, it has very little, if any effect on the flashlight performance - I can not see any change in the beam. However, the glow powder is spread so unevenly that the glow effect is not very beautiful because you can see the reflection of individual strontium aluminate flakes.

To sum up, this is quick and easy but also quick and dirty way to create glow effect.

-N

great step by step illustration. wish all of the mods could do the same way.
thanks

Great series of pics. There is not much powder on that thing so I am assuming that it doesn't glow for too long.

I'd imagine the powder might fall off too and get all in the reflector and lens. Best to do a more permanent ring around the black base of the emitter.

IsaacHayes said:

I'd imagine the powder might fall off too and get all in the reflector and lens. Best to do a more permanent ring around the black base of the emitter.

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That is my guess also... However, freely moving strontium aluminate flakes inside flaslight optics might create nicely glowing kaleidoscope effect?

Sooooo, this is in my opinion quite useless technique... However, not all the flashlight modding experiments need to be success stories and I think this experiment goes to nice-to-know category in the mod forum.

And thanks for all the comments!

-N

What I've done before is to mix the powder with some clear epoxy and put it around the base part of the LED. At the time, my main goal was using the epoxy to hold some butchered work on the electrical connections in place. They looked like they were about to fall off. I just added the glow powder to see how it looked. It came out very nice. I kept it below the level of the LED dome so it didn't seem to affect the performance at all yet still got enough light from the LED to charge up quickly and give a nice even glow. Since then, I've done it on a couple other lights just to get the glow effect. The only disadvantage is if you have to do any rework on the electrical connections after the glow epoxy is in place. After I accidentally blew a LuxV, I had a tough time chipping off the epoxy. It's a ggod thing the LED was dead, because the leads on it were totally trashed by the time I was done.

Here are some pictures of a GID treatment I did on a Luxeon LED. It definitely helps if you carefully paint the black body of the LED with bright white paint before adding the GID paint. I used the typical clear lacquer supplied by "The Glow Company" on this one, it's had a lot of use over the last year or so, no problems yet... I'm really please with the glow effect, the high quality green glow powder really does glow for hours and hours. When camping I have used this torch last thing at night (23:00 or midnight) and it's still glowing brightly enough to be easily findable in the dark at about 06:30 0r 07:00 the next day.





Rob