2D luxeon mag with SST-90 Build (Many Beam Shots Added)

https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/285081
For reference, my build thread for 2D with P7 & 4D with 3X P7




Luminus SST-90 5700K




Uses the same fivemega 2D-6AA adapter with duraloops that I use for my 2D P7.


Had to widen the reflector opening from 13mm to 15mm


P7 with shallow reflector vs SST-90 with deep reflector


3D Luxeon Rebel Magled / P7 / SST-90 / 3X P7


Magled


P7


SST-90


3X P7


3D Luxeon Rebel Magled / P7 / SST-90 / 3X P7


Magled


P7


SST-90


3X P7


3D Luxeon Rebel Magled / P7 / SST-90 / 3 X P7


Magled


P7


SST-90


3X P7


3D Luxeon Rebel Magled / P7 / SST-90 / 3 X P7


Magled


P7


SST-90


3X P7


3D Luxeon Rebel Magled / P7 / SST-90 / 3 X P7


Magled


P7


SST-90


3X P7

I love this light! Less flood than the P7, yet a larger and brighter hotspot. The duraloops run it at full briteness about 20 minutes, then trail off for another half an hour or so. I used der wichtels heatsink and 9A buck driver btw. No shots of the pill, I glued the buck driver into it with 3 dabs of arctic silver applied on non-conductive parts on the perimeter of the board. Thanks for watching

Re: 2D luxeon mag with SST-90 Build

Nice build!

Is this setup able t push the SST 90 to it's full lumen potential? This definitely looks like a good build for me but I don't want to drop a $30 led In it if it won't blow my P7 out of the water...

Re: 2D luxeon mag with SST-90 Build

tnathletics2b said:

Nice build!

Is this setup able t push the SST 90 to it's full lumen potential? This definitely looks like a good build for me but I don't want to drop a $30 led In it if it won't blow my P7 out of the water...

Click to expand...

Thank You!

It is very much brighter than my single P7. It throws farther b/c of the brighter hotspot than the P7 and has less flood. I'm sure the SST-50 would out-throw this though b/c you don't have to trim the reflector for it and therefore the hotspot will be smaller, but I still prefer the over twice the lumens you get with the SST-90 vs P7 (2250 vs 900).

In terms of battery power, eneloops can discharge at 10 amps while maintaining 1.0V, And I needed a battery voltage 2 volts higher than that of the emmiter, or 2.0V + ~3.6V, as directed by Der Wichtels buck driver. So I needed about 6.0 volts figuring on losses from internal resistances in the wires, body ect. Because its 6 batteries in series going into a buck driver, they are probably pushing more like 5-6 amps, and therefore their voltage should be closer 6.6 -7.0 volts while under load which is plenty.

I had tried using my 6AA pack and then the 12AA pack I use for my triple P7 via the charging jack with the driver wires temporarily soldered from the driver, and I noticed no difference in light output at all. I am positive that with quality eneloops or duraloops, the emmiter is driven under full power until it drops out of regulation 20 or more minutes later.

Re: 2D luxeon mag with SST-90 Build

Great response! Thank you...Now time to build my own! :rock::rock:

Re: 2D luxeon mag with SST-90 Build

tnathletics2b said:

Great response! Thank you...Now time to build my own! :rock::rock:

Click to expand...

No problem

It's a great light for sure. The one bit of advice I will leave though is that it is absolutely important that you use the thinnest layer of epoxy possible when glueing down the emmiter. I could have destroyed mine, I had smoke comming from the emmiter the first time around b/c my layer was just a little thick b/c the emmiter wasn't seated all the way. This thing produces a ton of heat, I swear as much as my tripple P7 maglite.

Happy modding!:twothumbs

Re: 2D luxeon mag with SST-90 Build

Thanks for the advice! Have you tried it with an aspheric lense? That is what I am going to do- 20 min of runtime isn't much but to make a SST90 spotlight in a 2D mag??? 20 minutes is plenty...

Also, did you use the 9a or 5a buck driver?

Re: 2D luxeon mag with SST-90 Build

tnathletics2b said:

Thanks for the advice! Have you tried it with an aspheric lense? That is what I am going to do- 20 min of runtime isn't much but to make a SST90 spotlight in a 2D mag??? 20 minutes is plenty...

Also, did you use the 9a or 5a buck driver?

Click to expand...

The 5A is good for the SST-50 and the 9A is good for the SST-90. You could use the 5A driver, and supposedly the SST-90 would be a little more efficient at 5A than the SST-50 driven at 5A b/c the SST-90 has more die surface area so it wouldent be as over-driven and would produce a bit less heat and a bit more lumens, but you would be misssing the pottential mega output of the SST-90.

I thought about using an aspheric lens but I'm not sure which one to use. So far, the only builds like this I have seen people do is using the standard mag body and then they had to cut the edge off the heatsink and sink it furthur into the maglite body to get the emmiter farther away from the aspheric lens. Because of that, I was hoping that an aspheric lens on a luxeon-based maglite would be easier to use because the emmiter allready sits farther into the maglite body as a result of how they designed the maglite for the deeper reflector used with the luxeon-rebbel emmiter. I was thinking I might get lucky and just be able to swap out the deep reflector for an aspheric lens on-the-go but I think I would have to research for a lens whose focal length is equal to the distance from the lens to the die of the emmiter (I think thats how it works...?). It would be really sweet though, an aspheric SST-90

I figured that instead of using glow powder/epoxy inside the heatsink, I would use those big plastic glow in the dark stars you stick on the cieling, and just cut a donut out of one to place down into the heatsink...Plus they come in multiple shades so I could make a pink one, blue, green, yellow, orange ect :laughing:

Re: 2D luxeon mag with SST-90 Build

I have a regular Mag with a p7 and a DX aspheric lens. I have to almost have it all the way undone to get the aspheric far enough away for it to focus. It throws great, but since it is a quad die, it has the dark cross in the middle of it.

And hey, your glow star idea is a heck of a lot cheaper than the glowpowder! It would be $30 to have it shipped to me! :shakehead

Re: 2D luxeon mag with SST-90 Build

tnathletics2b said:

I have a regular Mag with a p7 and a DX aspheric lens. I have to almost have it all the way undone to get the aspheric far enough away for it to focus. It throws great, but since it is a quad die, it has the dark cross in the middle of it.

And hey, your glow star idea is a heck of a lot cheaper than the glowpowder! It would be $30 to have it shipped to me! :shakehead

Click to expand...

Did the aspheric lens just fit right into the maglite head? Was there any modifying involved? If you had to have the head almost unscrewed to focus, then it might be almost ideal for the luxeon maglite. I'll buy one and try it out.

Is this the one? http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12834

Thanks for sharing beam-shot pictures! nice big spot in the SST-90

Re: 2D luxeon mag with SST-90 Build

Eddie-M said:

Did the aspheric lens just fit right into the maglite head? Was there any modifying involved? If you had to have the head almost unscrewed to focus, then it might be almost ideal for the luxeon maglite. I'll buy one and try it out.

Is this the one? http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12834

Click to expand...

It fit right in. That is the correct one. I don't have a picture, but it layed out the quad die of my P7 in a perfect square about 300 feet away on some trees. That is why I want to try it on the SST90....I bet it creates a sweet hotspot!

Having never tried out one of the LED Mag's I'm rather impressed looking at the beamshots, looks good for a stock light. Great work on the others too BTW.

ttwhin said:

Thanks for sharing beam-shot pictures! nice big spot in the SST-90

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Thank you!

tnathletics2b said:

It fit right in. That is the correct one. I don't have a picture, but it layed out the quad die of my P7 in a perfect square about 300 feet away on some trees. That is why I want to try it on the SST90....I bet it creates a sweet hotspot!

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OK, good to know. I'll order a couple. with DX shipping, expect me to post some pictures in several weeks :tired:

mrartillery said:

Having never tried out one of the LED Mag's I'm rather impressed looking at the beamshots, looks good for a stock light. Great work on the others too BTW.

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I was pretty impressed by my stock 6D maglite first time I fired it up. Nice job on the ~17,000 lumens though :nana:

But seriously though, the stock luxeon rebel mags have a nice tight beam. I'm tempted to modify one with the SST-50 just for the fact that I woulden't have to trim the reflector so I would retain the super tight hotspot. For now, I'll wait for Der Wichtel's multi mode drivers to come out before building any more mags.

You were right...the SST90 is considerably brighter than the P7. On my way to order parts....!

Very nice build and description, thanks for sharing...I though the rebel led reflector was plastic, how does it take the heat? or am I wrong and it's Al? ty

Does this Maglite have the same reflector as the stock, incandescent, since the luxeon-based maglites had LED module that was exchangeable with inandescent lamp?

I'm interested in building 3D ni-mh direct drive SST-90 maglite, but was told that stock reflector doesn't focus emitted light very well...

tnathletics2b said:

You were right...the SST90 is considerably brighter than the P7. On my way to order parts....!

Click to expand...

Glad to hear it...get to it!

Nokoff said:

Very nice build and description, thanks for sharing...I though the rebel led reflector was plastic, how does it take the heat? or am I wrong and it's Al? ty

Click to expand...

Thanks!The deep rebel reflector is plastic. So far no problems, the reflector doesn't contact the heatsink when focused so there is no direct thermal coupling. It doesn't seem the air inside the maglite head is getting super heated like in a hot-wire mod, so I doubt there will be any problems.

pulstar said:

Does this Maglite have the same reflector as the stock, incandescent, since the luxeon-based maglites had LED module that was exchangeable with inandescent lamp?

I'm interested in building 3D ni-mh direct drive SST-90 maglite, but was told that stock reflector doesn't focus emitted light very well...

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if there was a mag led with the stock reflector, when I went shopping at Wallmart for this, I specificaly looked down the reflectors through the packaging to make sure it looked deep. The luxeon rebel is on a little slug that fits right were the bulb is on incadecent models, so yeah it can be interchanged. So the stock heatsinking isn't that great I'm sure, but they did shorten the bulb tower, made some changes on the body's threading at the head, and made a longer reflector that fits in all the maglite heads.

I can't comment on how well a stock reflector from a cheapo 3D would work with an SST-90. I would imagine the beam would be similar to a P7 mod like mine, exept brighter, no 4 square die, and a little longer throw if you used a smooth reflector. Seems like the deep rebel reflector cuts down on the flood considerably with any emmiter used, but will only tighten the hotspot if you dont widen the opening from 13 to 15mm. I could be wrong though.