Hi-CRI Nichia NS6L183 Warm White LED with Mac's Ti Host

I was fortunate to buy one of Mac's awesome Ti hosts from his SST-50 EDC run, but instead of a very bright SST-50, I wanted a lower power option, with a Hi-CRI LED. I already have a few of the very nice 1 watt Nichia 083 that Don used in his Ti beauties, but I found a place in Germany that sells the hight/top bin of the 3 watt Nichia NSL183T-H3, warm white, with a CRI of 85, and a "temp" of 3500K.

Here on top is Mac's Ti host, and below is my Ti host using Don's Ti Clickie Pack, with a Ti XR19 Mule Head, and Don's Nichia 083 High CRI LED:



This new Nichia 3 watt LED, for this top bin, should make a typical of 215 lumens at 700mA @ a typical vf of 3.5V per Nichia's data sheet, and with a max. current rating of 900mA. I since I wanted to drive it from a single CR123 cell LiIon rechargeable cell, I selected the BB Nextgen 750mA, as I did not wanted to drive it too hard.

I first tried soldering the new emiters into Don's boards, but the new emiter has both its positive and negative pads partly inside the plastic body in the bottom, and it shorts out with the center pad. Nichia 083 on the left and Nichia NSL183 on the right:



Mac's design calls for a 17mm dia board/driver, but the BB Nextgen is 0.55" dia, so I had to make a custom spacer to hold the board in position:





Very nice, tight fit:



This was my paper design for the Delrin adapter (not drawn to scale):



Preparing the negative contact wire with my 3-hand helper



I had to file the Delrin spacer a little to clear the screw that Mac provides for a solid GND:





Testing the reflector focus - beautiful:



Created the raised positive contact for the driver:



Solder the driver wire's:



and applied a thin coat of two-part clear epoxy to keep everything in place:



Here are the two hosts:



How does the new hi-cri emiter looks? Amazing. Here on top if my new Ti host with the NS6L183 and on the bottom is the Nichia 083 (on high):





Here the NS6L183 is on the left:



One at a time:
Ambient:



Nichia 083:



Nichia NSL183:



Here the NSL183 is on the left:



Once it gets darker here in Texas I will add a few more beamshots.

Will

Indoors - ambient:



Indoors - LunaSol 20 - low:



Indoors - LunaSol 20 - high:



Indoors - Mule with Nichia 083 - low:



Indoors - Mule with Nichia 083 - high:



Indoors - Mac's host with NS6L183:



****************************************************************
Outdoors - ambient:



Outdoors - LunaSol 20 - low:



Outdoors - LunaSol 20 - high:



Outdoors - Mule with Nichia 083 - low:



Outdoors - Mule with Nichia 083 - high:



Outdoors - Mac's host with NS6L183:



****************************************************************
Outdoors - ambient:



Outdoors - LunaSol 20 - low:



Outdoors - LunaSol 20 - high:



Outdoors - Mule with Nichia 083 - low:



Outdoors - Mule with Nichia 083 - high:



Outdoors - Mac's host with NS6L183:



****************************************************************
Outdoors - ambient:



Outdoors - LunaSol 20 - low:



Outdoors - LunaSol 20 - high:



Outdoors - Mule with Nichia 083 - low:



Outdoors - Mule with Nichia 083 - high:



Outdoors - Mac's host with NS6L183:



****************************************************************
Outdoors - Mule with Nichia 083 - high on left, Mac's host with NSL183 on right:






****************************************************************
Outdoors - Mule with Nichia 083 - high:


Mac's host with NSL183:

Looks nice W!

It's hard to find a nichia being used in a reflector, thanks for the pics.
The nichia High-CRI seems to be the only one that renders blues well also.

How was the german source to work with?

Opps, sorry about that. I edited the first post with the link to the German vendor, but here is the link anyway:
http://www.leds.de/index.php?force_sid=5c8e762adb2376f729512635b8514031&cl=search&searchcnid=&searchvendor=&searchparam=Nichia+NS6L183&x=40&y=10


and I became aware of this particular LED due to this thread right here on the forums:
NS6L183 - 3500k Nichia 258lumen 95l per watt CRI 85

Sweet light Will! Now I need to upgrade my reflector-based Nichia 083 to this LED. I just tried to place an order, but can't get through the ordering process because USA is not an option among the ship-to countries. How did you place your order? :thinking:

mudman cj said:

I just tried to place an order, but can't get through the ordering process because USA is not an option among the ship-to countries. How did you place your order? :thinking:

Click to expand...

I got lucky and found a work colleague who bought them in Germany for me. This distributor seems to be one of the few ones that have these in stock.

Another awesome build, Will! :thumbsup: I can't wait to see the outdoor beamshots. It looks like you found the sweet spot to put the 183 behind a reflector. Are you using a McR-20s?

I'm surprised that the 083 looks purple in comparison. It always looked a bit on the warm side for me. Is this a 083a or 083b?

Also, does anyone know if these 183 LEDs are available at 5000K? I'd love to purchase a few to play with.

Post #2 updated with beamshots. It is hard to compare these due to the Mule with the Nichia 083 having a wide angle and less output than the host with the Nichia NS6L183, but I did the best that I could to show how both of them look like, and to make things interesting/different, I included my LS20 as a 3rd light in the comparison as well.

great work! I have always dreamed of having a 183 light.. :mecry:

VERY NICE!!!

I love your work!:wave:
So many detailed pics and soooo clean!!:bow:oo::thumbsup:

That emitter looks awesome!!
The beamshots do an excellent job of telling the story!

Thank you for the kind words

wquiles said:

I got lucky and found a work colleague who bought them in Germany for me. This distributor seems to be one of the few ones that have these in stock.

Click to expand...

They shouldn't have these in stock according to Nichia's policy, unless they've first been attached to another product, like a PCB. Nichia doesn't allow distributors.

What would be great is if a vendor decided it was worth the cost of mounting them on PCB's for sale, so there would be an easy way for us to get small quantities here in the USA.

maxspeeds said:

Another awesome build, Will! :thumbsup: I can't wait to see the outdoor beamshots. It looks like you found the sweet spot to put the 183 behind a reflector. Are you using a McR-20s?

I'm surprised that the 083 looks purple in comparison. It always looked a bit on the warm side for me. Is this a 083a or 083b?

Also, does anyone know if these 183 LEDs are available at 5000K? I'd love to purchase a few to play with.

Click to expand...

I got a few straight from Nichia at 4500K, that look very nice. The only problem is that if I want more I have to buy a full reel.

DaFABRICATA said:

VERY NICE!!!

I love your work!:wave:
So many detailed pics and soooo clean!!:bow:oo::thumbsup:

That emitter looks awesome!!
The beamshots do an excellent job of telling the story!

Click to expand...

+1 :thumbsup:

Nice build (as usual) BUT I really like the efficiency on that 183 emitter. Can you do a beamshot with the 083 on one side and the 183 next to it both shining on a target with lots of different colours (but without mixing the streams!?!?!?!?)? This will eliminate camera auto-adjustment effects. Also, what do you think of the 183 compared to the Seoul high CRI P4s?? Thanks again. PS no heatsinking for the driver??

ICUDoc said:

Nice build (as usual) BUT I really like the efficiency on that 183 emitter. Can you do a beamshot with the 083 on one side and the 183 next to it both shining on a target with lots of different colours (but without mixing the streams!?!?!?!?)? This will eliminate camera auto-adjustment effects. Also, what do you think of the 183 compared to the Seoul high CRI P4s?? Thanks again. PS no heatsinking for the driver??

Click to expand...

You mean like this but with a multi-colored "target" instead of the white wall?



I have tried that indoors already (with those colored blocks/toys from my kids), and the problem is that the output difference between the too is so large that the Nichia NS6L tends to wash out everything, and if you under-expose to where the Nichia HS6L is not over-powering the image, then the Nichia 083 is not bright enough. This was the best I was able to get, but it is not a colored background:



Even if I had them both in "mule" configuration with no reflectors, the NS6L is about 3 Watts vs. the 1 watt for the 083, and the output on the NS6L is supposed to be about twice the lumen output, so it makes side-by-side comparisons a little bit difficult. I will try to see if I find a way to fix the camera's white balance in manual mode so that I can take two shots with similar brightness so that you can see the tint better.

ICUDoc said:

Also, what do you think of the 183 compared to the Seoul high CRI P4s?? Thanks again. PS no heatsinking for the driver??

Click to expand...

I don't have anything with the Seoul high CRI P4's, but if you send me a light with one of them I can take some side-by-side pics and then return to you.

ICUDoc said:

PS no heatsinking for the driver??

Click to expand...

Not this time given the efficiency of the driver and relatively low output current.

Well, it turns out there is a manual setting for the white balance, so I tried "Sun" and "Incandescent". To try to balance the different in output, I shot the pics for the Nichia 083 at 1/2" @ f6.5 and the ones with the NS6L at 1/10" @ f6.5.

Here the white balance is set to Incandescent.
First the Nichia 083, then the Nichia NS6L:





Here the white balance is set to Sun.
First the Nichia 083, then the Nichia NS6L:

Thanks will- yes I see what you mean, a big difference in output makes comparisons hard. Which do you prefer in colour?
Shoot me a PM with address and I'll send you a Seoul to try out.

ICUDoc said:

Thanks will- yes I see what you mean, a big difference in output makes comparisons hard. Which do you prefer in colour?

Click to expand...

This is very, very subjective, and it is hard to make comparisons since the beam/intensity is so different. I did not notice so much that purple tint on the 083 until I had the NS6L, but it is real - the purple tint on the 083 is there. The NS6L is slightly more yellow - more like an incandescent light. The one area where the 083 looks nicer is on human skin - the purple tint is more pleasant than the slightly yellowish tint. After two nights of testing I like the NS6L color/tint a little bit better as it seems a little bit more natural/pleasing to my eyes against most subjects, but I will keep testing as I am having fun with the new host from Mac

ICUDoc said:

Shoot me a PM with address and I'll send you a Seoul to try out.

Click to expand...

PM sent. Thanks

Nice light Will! :twothumbs

Thanks Will. The best part is that my kids are no longer fighting over the Ti mule, as now they have two Ti hosts to use at night