CREE + aspheric vs P1D-CE first beamshot

FYI



OK in order to understand this beamshot you need to know: -

The wall is not neutral white it is a pinkish coloured plaster common here in the UK.

The torch overall diameter is virtually identical to the P1D but might be capable of losing a little (1mm?) wall thickness.

The P1D-CE is running in normal (middle range or startup) mode.

The aspheric torch is direct driven by 3 LR44 button cells at about 90mA with no dropper resistor. There is no supplementary reflector.

The torches are obviously both level with the camera, the distance is about 8 feet and this is close to the distance at which the aspheric is focussed.

I've only built an experimental head so far...

w

I put aspherical lens into Lumapower M3.
beamshots: https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/157180

Here are the components. The lens is an uncoated 17mm dia 12mm focal length with backfocus of 6.8 mm and an f-number of about 0.7 (hard to improve on the f-number). I ground the spacer down bit by bit to obtain the best focus and parallelism. Concentricity is good. My best guess is that when equally driven the assembly will be approximately the same size as a P1D-CE (if CR123 is employed) and that the spot will be of about the same size but more intense (not a LOT more) than that of the Fenix with a poorer spill. The spot is of course an image of the die unless deliberately unfocussed.

I have some seoul emitters, I don't expect quite as good results. I am building an inductorless driver but I'm having a bit of trouble with soldering a 12-pin 3x4mm DXF SMT package. This should run 500 maybe 700mA.

You can make the spot arbitrarily small (concentrated) by employing a longer focal length, but the lens diameter has to grow in proportion if you want to capture as much light.

I will probably build up this light to the point where I can try it on top of a 'scope for rabbiting, but given the way that the weight goes up with the lens diameter, I'm starting to feel that this is a bit of a dead end developmentally unless the new Phillips LED die is smaller than the Cree. Anyway I'll get a bit of practise screwcutting on the lathe...






w