Active Cooling for LED spotlight

(Hope this is in the right category, I thought about posting in the Spotlights/HID section, but it seemed more geared towards HID stuff).

I've seen many pistol-grip style spotlights with LEDs in them recently, Stanley, Black and Decker, some off-brand at Home Depot, and they are all made of PLASTIC and have relatively low-outputs (obviously intentional due to lack of heat sinking capability). I suppose there is a lack of market desire for Aluminum LED spotlights, which could run Cree XM-Ls, SST-90s, that sort of thing. So, my thought was to build a quick-and-dirty high-powered LED spotlight with one of those inexpensive 6v Lanterns that can be had at Home Depot or Walmart, and to achieve cooling by mounting the LED to a copper or aluminum slug inside the plastic body, then put a small computer case fan inside, drill holes where needed in the body, and let the airflow take care of heat. I would run perhaps an XP-E (since I have some spare) or order an XM-L if I wanted to get crazy. According to specs, at 3.2vf, the XM-L draws about 2.1amps, which is 6.7 watts. I couldn't find any direct information about case fan heat-removal capability (though of course it must vary wildly based on fan position, size, speed, etc) but quick research tells me that computer chips can easily run 100+watts, so if three or four case fans can deal with that, should one deal with a few watts from an LED?

I know this is reaaaally unscientific, but the inventor in me says, "BUILD IT AND FIND OUT IF THE LED GOES *POOF*!"

Any thoughts? Criticisms? Suggestions? Thanks!

-TWhitehouse

ummm your plan would work. active cooling works many many times better than passive.

but you will end up with a bulky plastic unit that's not waterproof. heavy due to the lead acid batts which have bad energy to weight ratio compared to lithium ion.

i believe it would be more practical to get something like a fenix TK35 if you wanna stick with LED

but if you're gonna stick a HID in there then that's a different matter

I was thinking of putting some LiFePo4 18650s in there instead of the 6v lantern battery it comes with. As for waterproofing, yeah, it would be totally useless, but I live where we maybe get four days of rain a year and it would probably only see duty as a... well, no duty LOL, just a build to build it, maybe as a conversation peice. But yeah, a TK35... *drool* do want. Need cash... thanks for the input!

If you want to do that , I think you need heatsink with heatpipes from some computer processor.

http://www.google.si/search?tbm=isc...884l9047l0l12999l8l8l0l0l0l0l248l1436l0.5.3l8

cooling ribs and vent must be outside !

I already did a test build with active cooling in a plastic case. Its around 10 watts but it doesnt really need a big fan. A little airflow is enough to get the heat out. You can take a look if you want -> http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb...cooling-*AA*&p=3601029&viewfull=1#post3601029

Active cooling works, but a big diameter of the light is far more important and more easy to build.
For making a stock plastic led-light overdrive (higher current) active cooling is useful, but I would prefer a proper stock Led torch.

I think most of the issue of active cooling is somewhere to dump the heat. A sealed plastic light you probably end up dumping the heat on the batteries and it builds up inside the light itself. The one disadvantage is the power used to move the heat that could be used as light itself. The space used to blow off the heat you probably could just consider a larger heatsink instead with similar results.

Its all about heat sink area and air flow. Just adding a fan is not enough, you need to increase the area of the heat sink over which the air will flow. That will make it work best. You do not need a large fan, just a good design.

Some of the high powered bulb replacement products use a product from Nuventix which behaves as a fan.

Semiman

I have some computer water cooling stuff I'll sell you! :-D

Here is a fan cooled led spotlight I made:
SST-50 to 9Amp
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb...e-300K-lux-LED-Torpedo-amp-fun-with-Maxa-Beam

WOW, u have the same idea as me.
i do a search on ebay and came up with this, description say it is al case
http://cgi.ebay.com/Rechargeable-10...383?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45fb91e2a7