twhitehouse
Newly Enlightened
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2010
- Messages
- 16
(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
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