Elly Glass Lens

I emailed Kai at Kaidomain and asked if he would offer for sale the glass lens that comes on the new upgraded cree Elly. He said that he would put it up on his site. Now you can upgrade your existing Elly's.
Mike
Mike

That's awesome! Based on the price of the new Cree Elly, the lens should be about 10 cents! :lolsign:

If plastic lense gets hit it shows a scrach, but when a glass lense gets hit it breaks down.
Is glass really better than plastic?

cage said:

If plastic lense gets hit it shows a scrach, but when a glass lense gets hit it breaks down.
Is glass really better than plastic?

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When it comes to scratch resistance, glass is better.

now we just need dealextreme to sell the reflectors!

I'm wondering if the DX lights are truly going to come with an aluminum reflector. Perhaps it will be a plastic reflector with an "aluminiumized" coating.

Besides, outside of the world of hotwires, why is an aluminum reflector any better than a plastic one? I'd think molding a uniformly shaped reflector would actually be easier and less expensive than machining one of out metal. Provided the base material is uniform, it isn't going to matter what it's made of once the reflective coating is applied.

Honestly, I want an inexpensive textured reflector. Heck, I'd might even be satisfied with one of those faceted ones like the kind you see in so many dollar store flashlights. Why can't they give us a cheap AA Cree light with a textured reflector to smooth out the dark ring? I wouldn't care the least little bit if it were plastic.

Ty_Bower said:

I'm wondering if the DX lights are truly going to come with an aluminum reflector. Perhaps it will be a plastic reflector with an "aluminiumized" coating.

Besides, outside of the world of hotwires, why is an aluminum reflector any better than a plastic one? I'd think molding a uniformly shaped reflector would actually be easier and less expensive than machining one of out metal. Provided the base material is uniform, it isn't going to matter what it's made of once the reflective coating is applied.

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The only possible advantage I can think of is that an aluminum reflector coudl provide yet another thermal path for heatsinking away from the LED -- especially since it sits so close to the emitter. Of course, for a 1W flashlight that doesn't make a lot of difference -- it would matter more for the 3-4W lights.

Honestly, I want an inexpensive textured reflector. Heck, I'd might even be satisfied with one of those faceted ones like the kind you see in so many dollar store flashlights. Why can't they give us a cheap AA Cree light with a textured reflector to smooth out the dark ring? I wouldn't care the least little bit if it were plastic.

Click to expand...

Believe it or not there is no dark ring -- the "dark region" around the hotspot is actually the same intensity as the sidespill (both regions are lit up by light coming straight out the front of the flashlight). However, the aluminum ring used to hold down the dome on the Crees reflects a yellow ring away from the hotspot -- the brain interprets the space in between the hotspot and the ring as being darker but that's just an illusion. Nonetheless, a textured reflector would be very nice.

This cheap 3AAA flashlight actually has one that works perfectly with the Cree. Its threads also match the Elly, If someone wanted to do the work of transferring the circuitry and LED from the Elly into the head of that light, they could mount it to the Elly body and have a clean, textured output with no noticeable yellow ring. Or, they could use an Elly tube + 14500 to make a direct drive flashlight using that head, rather than the crappy 3xAAA setup -- the Elly body woudl be much better for heatsinking and the switch is nicer.