Z
z_nerobro
Guest
We'll start off with the TL;DR so..
TL;DR: What's the highest power you can get out of a LED in a 502b chassis.
So this story starts roughly three years ago. I ended up buying some 3watt, 110lm flashlights from dealextreme. I chose specifically flashlights that took AAs as thats what my standing stock of batteries was.
Well, with two of those, I was quite happy riding my bicycle around at night. I could do 17-18mph and have time to stop. Say the least, I was happy with my $22 of flashlights. real bicycle headlights start at $100 and the skys the limit.
I got faster. I was out riding my headlights. So back to Dx I went. I ended up with some 250lm 502b chassis flashlights. Say the least, I was impressed. I did some bench testing, and found that my old 3watt flashlights were drawing 1.75watts. These new flashlights drew 4.2 watts.
It was like I brought the sun. It was awesome. 8.4watts of LED goes a long freaking way.
So, I was looking aruond on Dx, looking for something brighter. And they listed some 502b chassis lights that claimed to have 900lm. (I know that the lumen ratings at dx are inflated....)
I got those flashlights in the mail last weekend. And when I installed batteries, I was disappointed. Despite having a 4 emitter die on them, they didn't put out any more light. I threw my DMM on them, and found they were only drawing 1.5amps or so. Not nearly enough to be throwing 4 times as much light.
Insert some experimentation... and what I think is a failed driver, I am now quite sure that the ad was wrong.
Im not particularly totally crushed, as Im handy, and ... well... Ill get what I want in the end. I at least got some nice flashlight bodies for my investment.
Doing the math, to put out four times as much light, I'd need four times as much current. At least. I've seen what 12 watt led emitters look like. I don't think there's any way I could get that in the body, and I expect cooling would be critical.
So the question is, what do you think is the most power you could get out of one of the single cell 502b flashlight? 6watt maybe? 10 watt?
TL;DR: What's the highest power you can get out of a LED in a 502b chassis.
So this story starts roughly three years ago. I ended up buying some 3watt, 110lm flashlights from dealextreme. I chose specifically flashlights that took AAs as thats what my standing stock of batteries was.
Well, with two of those, I was quite happy riding my bicycle around at night. I could do 17-18mph and have time to stop. Say the least, I was happy with my $22 of flashlights. real bicycle headlights start at $100 and the skys the limit.
I got faster. I was out riding my headlights. So back to Dx I went. I ended up with some 250lm 502b chassis flashlights. Say the least, I was impressed. I did some bench testing, and found that my old 3watt flashlights were drawing 1.75watts. These new flashlights drew 4.2 watts.
It was like I brought the sun. It was awesome. 8.4watts of LED goes a long freaking way.
So, I was looking aruond on Dx, looking for something brighter. And they listed some 502b chassis lights that claimed to have 900lm. (I know that the lumen ratings at dx are inflated....)
I got those flashlights in the mail last weekend. And when I installed batteries, I was disappointed. Despite having a 4 emitter die on them, they didn't put out any more light. I threw my DMM on them, and found they were only drawing 1.5amps or so. Not nearly enough to be throwing 4 times as much light.
Insert some experimentation... and what I think is a failed driver, I am now quite sure that the ad was wrong.
Im not particularly totally crushed, as Im handy, and ... well... Ill get what I want in the end. I at least got some nice flashlight bodies for my investment.
Doing the math, to put out four times as much light, I'd need four times as much current. At least. I've seen what 12 watt led emitters look like. I don't think there's any way I could get that in the body, and I expect cooling would be critical.
So the question is, what do you think is the most power you could get out of one of the single cell 502b flashlight? 6watt maybe? 10 watt?
