Z
z_Richwouldnt
Guest
I worked for quite a few years as a reliability engineer for a major American corporation printer manufacturer in silicon valley.
Standard procedure for achieving electronics reliability was to do designs which specified components which would be derated in use from their manufacturer rated capacity limits be it voltage, current, heat dissipation etc. This historically has been standard procedure in electronics design and the military even has Mil Spec and Mil Std requirements and publications concerning this.
It appears that at least for the emitter LED many flashlight manufacturers do not do this. They try to extract every lumen the LED manufacturer specifies or allows. This cannot provide the best reliability for the design. There are exceptions as I note that Olight runs the Luminus SST-50 LED at 500 lumens in the M21 Warrior and at 800 Lumens in the M31 Triton. Other makers are running it at a claimed 1000 Lumens output which I believe is about the maximum specified.
If you want a flashlight for high output mode use, particularly in hot conditions, then I suggest choosing one which is specified as not running the LED at it's output limits. Good LED cooling as evinced by maximum cooling fins on the light is also suggested. As most of us cannot disassemble the lights and analize things at the components level these are my suggested guidelines if reliability is a priority.
Standard procedure for achieving electronics reliability was to do designs which specified components which would be derated in use from their manufacturer rated capacity limits be it voltage, current, heat dissipation etc. This historically has been standard procedure in electronics design and the military even has Mil Spec and Mil Std requirements and publications concerning this.
It appears that at least for the emitter LED many flashlight manufacturers do not do this. They try to extract every lumen the LED manufacturer specifies or allows. This cannot provide the best reliability for the design. There are exceptions as I note that Olight runs the Luminus SST-50 LED at 500 lumens in the M21 Warrior and at 800 Lumens in the M31 Triton. Other makers are running it at a claimed 1000 Lumens output which I believe is about the maximum specified.
If you want a flashlight for high output mode use, particularly in hot conditions, then I suggest choosing one which is specified as not running the LED at it's output limits. Good LED cooling as evinced by maximum cooling fins on the light is also suggested. As most of us cannot disassemble the lights and analize things at the components level these are my suggested guidelines if reliability is a priority.
