Ra
Flashlight Enthusiast
The SSC-P4 Microblaster !
Hi guyzz,
This is about a project I started a year ago! Didn't have the time to post about this sooner..
As most of you meight not know, apart from the HID-love I have, I'm playing with led's as well. Led's are very usefull in smaller torches, and are becomming more efficient every year!
I was not quite happy with buying 90 lumens/watt leds and throw away much of this efficiency by using a conventional reflector setup or aspheric lenses.
Ok, aspherical lenses are great for throw, but not very practical with virtually no usable sidespill!
With my optical background, I always try to improve the optics (lenses, reflectors) used in torches today. When I saw the acryllic based TIR-optics a few years ago, I instantly knew that those were the best possible collimators for use with high power leds like luxeon and seoul. The best solution for high throw with usable sidespill. De big disatvantage is that they come in only a few sizes, and are very fragile.
So I began thinking (again..) and came up with this:
Above are the theoretics behind a glass-based TIR optic I wanted to make myself! Grabbing an emittance angle of 170 degrees and having a total efficiency of 95% !! Yep, that means 95% of the emitted led-lumens are actually converted into torchlumens!
And this is one of the results:
Above, you see a 30mm diameter version, I've made a few smaller versions as well. One of those smaller versions is working very well in my new Microblaster:
Microblaster is a SSC-P4, 3-level, reed-switch controlled, super waterproof (depth 300m) mini torch with up to 200 lumens of output at 2200 lux/1m
With a head-diameter of only 17.5mm and a reflector-diameter of 15.5mm, making my own optic was the only solution to prevent the nessessity of using low effficiency conventional reflectors for this.. OK, not quite: I machened some acryllic optics before to fit them in small lights I modded earlier:
They are based on earlier Luxeon-III emitters and still work fine. EDIT: I recently fitted the bigger one with a SSC-P4 emitter: 6500 cp (in stead of 2600 cp)
Making a glass based optic takes two full days, but it's worth the hard labour: Glass has much lower thermal expansion, can easily be coated with an antreflection-coating, and can easily be cleaned without damaging it. And, within quite a big range, I can make any size, with any collimation angle!
However, being fully glass, size is limited to about 50mm diameter, bigger will be heavy!
Beampattern:
As you can see, amost all the lumens are concentrated within the main beam, very, very little is lost towards the side!
Glass based TIR's have exactly the same throw as aspheric lenses with the same diameter, but TIR's give more usable sidespill due to the much higher efficiency!
Specs Microblaster:
Seoul SSC P4 emitter
Massive copper heatsink with embedded reed-switches, attached to reflector-head.
AW 10280 180 mAh Li-Ion cell
3-level (resistor based):
1: 50 hours 2 torchlumens/ 20cp (average output, with resistor)
2: 3 hours 20 torchlumens/210cp (average output, with resistor)
3: 15 min 200 torchlumens/2200cp (average output, direct drive, no resistor)
Water resistant up to depths of 300 meters.
I'm working on a Cree Q-5 Microblaster, more about this later..
Any questions??
Hi guyzz,
This is about a project I started a year ago! Didn't have the time to post about this sooner..
As most of you meight not know, apart from the HID-love I have, I'm playing with led's as well. Led's are very usefull in smaller torches, and are becomming more efficient every year!
I was not quite happy with buying 90 lumens/watt leds and throw away much of this efficiency by using a conventional reflector setup or aspheric lenses.
Ok, aspherical lenses are great for throw, but not very practical with virtually no usable sidespill!
With my optical background, I always try to improve the optics (lenses, reflectors) used in torches today. When I saw the acryllic based TIR-optics a few years ago, I instantly knew that those were the best possible collimators for use with high power leds like luxeon and seoul. The best solution for high throw with usable sidespill. De big disatvantage is that they come in only a few sizes, and are very fragile.
So I began thinking (again..) and came up with this:
Above are the theoretics behind a glass-based TIR optic I wanted to make myself! Grabbing an emittance angle of 170 degrees and having a total efficiency of 95% !! Yep, that means 95% of the emitted led-lumens are actually converted into torchlumens!
And this is one of the results:
Above, you see a 30mm diameter version, I've made a few smaller versions as well. One of those smaller versions is working very well in my new Microblaster:
Microblaster is a SSC-P4, 3-level, reed-switch controlled, super waterproof (depth 300m) mini torch with up to 200 lumens of output at 2200 lux/1m
With a head-diameter of only 17.5mm and a reflector-diameter of 15.5mm, making my own optic was the only solution to prevent the nessessity of using low effficiency conventional reflectors for this.. OK, not quite: I machened some acryllic optics before to fit them in small lights I modded earlier:
They are based on earlier Luxeon-III emitters and still work fine. EDIT: I recently fitted the bigger one with a SSC-P4 emitter: 6500 cp (in stead of 2600 cp)
Making a glass based optic takes two full days, but it's worth the hard labour: Glass has much lower thermal expansion, can easily be coated with an antreflection-coating, and can easily be cleaned without damaging it. And, within quite a big range, I can make any size, with any collimation angle!
However, being fully glass, size is limited to about 50mm diameter, bigger will be heavy!
Beampattern:
As you can see, amost all the lumens are concentrated within the main beam, very, very little is lost towards the side!
Glass based TIR's have exactly the same throw as aspheric lenses with the same diameter, but TIR's give more usable sidespill due to the much higher efficiency!
Specs Microblaster:
Seoul SSC P4 emitter
Massive copper heatsink with embedded reed-switches, attached to reflector-head.
AW 10280 180 mAh Li-Ion cell
3-level (resistor based):
1: 50 hours 2 torchlumens/ 20cp (average output, with resistor)
2: 3 hours 20 torchlumens/210cp (average output, with resistor)
3: 15 min 200 torchlumens/2200cp (average output, direct drive, no resistor)
Water resistant up to depths of 300 meters.
I'm working on a Cree Q-5 Microblaster, more about this later..
Any questions??
Last edited:
...:twothumbs...:bow:
