Atomic_Chicken
Enlightened
Greetings!
Ok - I've been thinking about angle-head flashlights for a while this evening. It seems to me that they have a lot of advantages, and one VERY big disadvantage. The problem? You have to take the power and signal connections and run them through a flex-coupling. This increases complexity, decreases reliability, and makes it more expensive and difficult to waterproof.
Here's a plan for an angle-head flashlight that should eliminate the problems. Take a tight beam flashlight, and reflect it off a swivel-mounted mirror in front of the emitter. Keep all of the flashlight electronics in the main housing, and reflect the light itself instead of trying to mount the light(s) and reflector on a swivel. Make the mirror so thin that if you rotate it at 180 Deg. from the light source, it allows most of the light to escape unobstructed, exiting right past the thin mirror profile (making it behave like a normal straight-on flashlight). Offset the mirror ever-so-slightly to the side so that the center of the emitter radiation just narrowly misses the edge-on mirror when it's at the 180 Deg. point. You should be able to get as much spill as you want from this design, provided you focus INWARD toward the mirror, and let the light then spread AFTER it hits the mirror.
Anyone who wants to make a light like this: I'm giving you the idea free of any restrictions, just don't try and patent it or I'll contest it and claim prior art with this post. I'd very much like to see a new breed of angle-head lights (or slip-on angle-head adapters for existing lights... a whole other potential industry!) created based on this concept.
Best wishes,
Bawko
Ok - I've been thinking about angle-head flashlights for a while this evening. It seems to me that they have a lot of advantages, and one VERY big disadvantage. The problem? You have to take the power and signal connections and run them through a flex-coupling. This increases complexity, decreases reliability, and makes it more expensive and difficult to waterproof.
Here's a plan for an angle-head flashlight that should eliminate the problems. Take a tight beam flashlight, and reflect it off a swivel-mounted mirror in front of the emitter. Keep all of the flashlight electronics in the main housing, and reflect the light itself instead of trying to mount the light(s) and reflector on a swivel. Make the mirror so thin that if you rotate it at 180 Deg. from the light source, it allows most of the light to escape unobstructed, exiting right past the thin mirror profile (making it behave like a normal straight-on flashlight). Offset the mirror ever-so-slightly to the side so that the center of the emitter radiation just narrowly misses the edge-on mirror when it's at the 180 Deg. point. You should be able to get as much spill as you want from this design, provided you focus INWARD toward the mirror, and let the light then spread AFTER it hits the mirror.
Anyone who wants to make a light like this: I'm giving you the idea free of any restrictions, just don't try and patent it or I'll contest it and claim prior art with this post. I'd very much like to see a new breed of angle-head lights (or slip-on angle-head adapters for existing lights... a whole other potential industry!) created based on this concept.
Best wishes,
Bawko
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