Need the right optic for MC-E

For one of my lighting projects I need an optic with a rather specific 'throw', or illumination circle with an MC-E. I'm totally inexperienced with the MC-Es and just not familiar with their optical offerings.

I need an MC-E, and combined optic (either acrylic of reflector - I don't care) to throw a fairly uniform spot around, oh, 15" or so in diameter at a distance of about 5-6'. A lot of spill is bad......but the spot itself doesn't have to be perfect.

Intuition tells me this is around a 15 degree or so optic....but not sure how this applies to the MC-E. DealExtreme has quite a few reflectors for the MC-E that look pretty much the same spec, and LED Supply has Carclo lenses like this:

http://ledsupply.com/10193.php

Any tips on which way to go?

That corresponds to a 10 to 15 degree beam angle.

You can get a Ledil CMC or Boom lense that gives a 20 degree span, or the RGB-X will have a 15 degree angle but it's not out yet.

If you don't need to use the MC-E, you can get some much tighter beams using the XR-E leds, I believe 12 degrees.

The Ledil Iris is a pretty good thrower Imho





this shot is at 2 metres from the board . there is hardly any wasted spill


but it is quite a large optic
38 mm diameter 28 mm high

That corresponds to a 10 to 15 degree beam angle

Click to expand...

Yeah...I actually sat down and did the math last night and came to the same conclusion. My second option is use an optic with a long focal ratio over the emitter, but I'll have to test a few things first.

Using regular Crees simply isn't an option because I have a set goal of 1,000lumens.

is there a limit to the size of the light module? I've seen many flashlights on here that have a hexagonal ring with center emitter, that's 7 LEDs. Why not 1 MC-E and 6 XR-E? :twothumbs

or are you trying to only use one LED?

Base module can be as big as a shoebox

Originally I was going to use a big Bridgelux and a 50mm optic, but the Bridgelux arrays have awkward power specs.

I'm not opposed to P7s either. Whatever gets it done.

I don't want to mess with that many emitters......won't look clean. Three or four MC-Es would simply look better - IMHO.