Thinking about making a headlamp...Advice please.

I am thinking about making my own headlamp from scratch. I'm talking about making the plastic housing and everything else. Of course I want to use LED's.
What I am aiming for is making a Petzl myo xp at less than half the cost and have it be as bright or brighter. I don't need a fancy switch. It will be on at full power all the time so the switch will be on or off, and I don't need any of the fancy options.
Having a spot is ok but I am really interested in making a "flood only" headlamp, so multiple led's is what i'm gunning for.
The reason for this build is that I love the flood of my Myo XP in a cave, but it's just not bright enough in the flood mode. The diffuser just takes too much light away. I also just want to do it for the only reason of doing it. I think it would be really cool to make one of my own.
Here's the problem.....I don't know nothing bout makin no led headlamp. I'm a newbie. The housing I can vacuum-form with no problem, and I can make a heatsink. The internals are what I know nothing about.:shrug:
Please point me in the right direction and I think I might become a future flashaholic.
Thanks in advance. Anthony

You've got a rig to vac-u-form ABS plastic!! Outstanding.

For the new headlamp just copy as much from the myo xp as you can.
or any other headlamp picture you can find on the web. Lots
a variations that do the same job.

4AA Battery pack , headband , power wires ,a small switch, a big heatsink !

Buy a Cree emitter or other new high output led.

For a flood beam where the led is inside the reflector will be the key.
Probably have to shave the bottom to raise the led higher into the cone
for a wide beam.

If you're looking for flood-only cave lighting, particularly if you're going to use Seoul LEDs, I'd suggest at least thinking about trying out a small conical reflector dropped over the LED.

I use them (~8-10mm deep, 90 degree cone) in the cave lights I build, and though initially the point was to avoid another issue (some extreme-wide light from the flood LED hitting the reflector for the spot beam and giving arc-like beam artifacts), the effect on the light of using only a relatively tiny reflector was significant in terms of usability and subjective brightness.
Due to the 45-degree half-angle, the light that would have gone very wide now goes broadly forwards, increasing direct-forward light by a factor of 2 or so with a very smooth fall-off, giving a beam that is still a flood, just with a gentle forward-bias, and less light going extremely wide, where it really isn't much use for caving.
Loss of the very wide LED light isn't actually a loss in practice, since there's a limit to how far sideways you can usefully see. Since the reflector isn't deep compared to the size of the LED, it's not as if it sharply cuts off all light more than 45 degrees off-axis anyway.
With a Cree, rather than a Seoul, the light is naturally more forward-biased, so any effects may be less pronounced.

Other advantages of the little reflector are that the LED doesn't have to be positioned absolutely at the front of the light, and light isn't wasted lighting up the lamp internals.

For experimentation, it's easy to roll your own reflectors for nothing out of silvered mylar food packaging. I actually prefer that to commercial reflective material, since it's slightly matte and gives less issue with blotchy artifacts if not perfectly conical. It also seems extremely durable even in lights that leak and which are therefore both warm and damp inside.

Got some parts from www.dealextreme.com that I think might work. They might not do the "flood" thing that I was talking about, but i think it might work well for just being bright. I plan on running this with 3 or 4 AA's.
Here's the parts #'s for that site. Please tell me what you think.# 2394 # 3256
Oh, and I've already vac formed my housing and made a reflector that may or may not work. I found some old blue snakeskin transfer paper to use on the plastic just for the heck of it.
How do I upload pics from my hard drive to this site?
Thanks in advance.

I'm thinking that you can probably use the correctly sized pipe end cap and place the driver, LED, and floody optic in there. The 3256 should work for 4 AA batteries. My guess for runtime and output with that driver(with a Cree XR-E Q5) is 3+ hours at 140-160 lumen out the front.

Re: Thinking about making a headlamp... Advice please.

Sounds like a great project. I've thought about making my own housing, and priced a few items from the local hardware shop, but it was much easier for me to retrofit a $3 headlamp that wouldn't have a future otherwise. The adjustable angle is the hard bit in a self-made one.

If you've already made your housing, does that mean you won't consider using two LEDs? One with a spot optic and the other with uk_caver's simple reflector would work quite nicely.

Unfortunately you can't upload pics to this site. You'll have to host them somewhere else and embed them or link to them. For example, drewfus99gt's efficiency graph which he posted at DX. Because it's wider than 800 pixels I'll link to it rather than embed it. http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/5373/dx3256br4.jpg

How will you heatsink the LED?

My heatsink is made from 1/4" aluminium that I cut grooves in with a bandsaw spaced out about 1/16". At a later date I can cut it to any size that the housing dictates.
I have 2 housings that I have made. One is more of the general "spot" purpose and the other is elongated to accept a row of led's for flood.
I'm just playing around with it right now, and researching this site for info.
It would be nice if I ended up with 2 really good HL's.
Torchboy, you have a great idea of retrofitting a cheap hl with upgraded equipment. If the housings get to be a bother then that is what I will do. And if I decide to do that then I will give away my custom housings to someone with more patience than me.
Besides the Cree, what are some good leds "the cheap white ones like the ones on the sides of the Apex pro " that I could use for flood that really put out the lm's?
Thanks.

I retrofitted one with all new guts and by just taking the reflector out of an EOS you can have an all flood lamp that is ok but the batteries don't last that long. On my more experimental version, I put a couple of driver boards from DX into the housing from a Yukon with a belt battery pack.

1000MA into a q5 cree is a large flood. Less is completely adequate for most things. Building an array of 5mm's seems like a waste of time because it would be a lot of work and it still wouldn't have a nice wide angle beam like the cree has. Other emitters would do the same thing but I went cree for color, etc. You only need one and it's like $6? I don't think you can do anything much better for the same $ range.

I've been using this lamp a lot this week when out fishing and it is great. If I did it over, I would leave out the emitter with the reflector because there is really no need of it and it is a pain in the butt clicking an extra time to shut the thing off.

Very nice, Moonfish!!!

Now I wish I hadn't traded off my Yukon HL.

Yes Moonfish, very nice, and the info is great. One question though, where can I get the info on how to build one of these or something like it. I can solder, and I know how to put together the lamp style led's with resitor's, but that's as far as my knowledge goes. Is there a link on this site or other sites with a basic tutorial on making these things?
The further I look into this the more complicated it get's, or am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

Your picture looks as if the HL delivers a spot. I'm a caver and would enjoy a good flood HL. Sorry that I didn't specify my usage. Thanks for the info and pics.

I think a Cree and one of these optics would be much better than a bunch of 5 mm LEDs. Why not start with a resistor-drive Cree (with NiMH cells it would have quite even light output) all mounted in one of your own housings?

consider a P7 on a variable mode board. You can get drivers or direct drive and use a D2Dim from taskled for modes.

That is the most lumens you will get from a single LED, but you need a heat sink.

Simply I took nylon strapping and folded the belt into the typical head band of a head lamp. On the left side I used two rubber bands from a bicycle inner tube and attached an MTE P7 that has 5 modes. I put another band around the bezel that has a bit of a flap as a glare shade. That is mostly a flood light and I run it mostly in Med. but do switch to high, that is a lot of lumens. This arrangement gives me about 20 minutes continuous run before I get into heat dissapation problems.

But it is an indication that a great P7 head lamp that can be made simply in direct drive, infinite brightness control, (D2Dim) from a dim glow to brightest smooth flood. KE and DX have and assortment of reflectors and now one has for about $35 a P7 in a 52mm reflector and driver, it is a drop in for many large flashlights. I bet you can make a great light with that.

Hi Northern Lights - can you post a picture of your homemade headlamp?
I love homemade lamps. They've got character.
-hopkins

hopkins said:

Hi Northern Lights - can you post a picture of your homemade headlamp?
I love homemade lamps. They've got character.
-hopkins

Click to expand...

Yes, maybe tomorrow, soon. Time short during work days.

hopkins said:

I love homemade lamps. They've got character.
-hopkins

Click to expand...

Quite off thread, sorry, but I once made a torch from a toilet roll, and it seems I'm not the only one. What character might these things have?

https://www.candlepowerforums.com/posts/2190183&postcount=6
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/posts/1757343&postcount=2
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/posts/1796838&postcount=8 - with picture!

I think Bimmerboy started a thread with pics of weird mods he had done.

You can buy one of those cheap P60 drop-ins and use it as a starting point. They're about $12 from DX.

That's a very tempting option, CM. Is it a real R2, do you think?

hopkins said:

Hi Northern Lights - can you post a picture of your homemade headlamp?
I love homemade lamps. They've got character.
-hopkins

Click to expand...

Here is an other P7 headlamp project (from homemade/modified forum):
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/201836
I use it now regularly for racing and training.

Thanks Jagge. Those are very nice headlamps. Well done.

hopkins said:

Hi Northern Lights - can you post a picture of your homemade headlamp?
I love homemade lamps. They've got character.
-hopkins

Click to expand...

Northern Lights said:

Yes, maybe tomorrow, soon. Time short during work days.

Click to expand...

Northern Lights said:

Simply I took nylon strapping and folded the belt into the typical head band of a head lamp. On the left side I used two rubber bands from a bicycle inner tube and attached an MTE P7 that has 5 modes. I put another band around the bezel that has a bit of a flap as a glare shade. That is mostly a flood light and I run it mostly in Med. but do switch to high, that is a lot of lumens. This arrangement gives me about 20 minutes continuous run before I get into heat dissapation problems.

Click to expand...

See the glare shield between my head and the bezel? A piece of bike inner tube with a flap.