750,000 lux XML Superthrower** 350yd beamshots

Hello all,

Although this forum has in turn cost me a lot of funds it has turned me on to a hobby that is truely addicting. lovecpf That being said here is my next build.

This was a follow up project

This is a dual lens system. Never throw away lenses you think are useless. Although they may not work individually, as in this case, when combine with a larger lens it makes a great project.

I will post pictures of the flashlight itselt later on once I have cleaned it up a bit. It is still in the prototype/testing phase.

Here is a quick wallshot post compared to the 250k lux previous project I had. I was getting 30,700 at 5 meters but I always scale the number down just in case my meter overreads. The only point of reference I had was an HS802 at 1.6 AMP was doing 30k-31k lux at 1 meter, which seems consistant.

I have put an overdriven xre-r2 ez 900 behind it and am having trouble getting good distances to take measurements at. The beam is smaller than my sensor on my lux meter anywhere in my house. I will get it outside one day.

The design of this setup lets me swap out different maglites very easily since I used a spare head I had as the base of the system. Here are a couple of pictures to give a taste. I will show more pictures as I complete this light including outside beamshots.

Now because I used a collimating lens the image of the die is actually larger. I didnt gain any measured lux, i think I even lost a tad(15k-25k), however there is much more light in the beam now and a perfect led picture.

Enjoy and thanks for looking!

250k lux XML



250k lux closer



750k lux xml



750k lux closer



BOTH SIDE BY SIDE



Update: Just finished setting up my XREr2 direct drive and got 10,100 at 10 meters. My last EZ900 so I have been super careful with it.........

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

Control shot (trees at 350

Google Earthed



Sorry the pictures didnt come out too good..... it was muggy and pretty foggy. As anticipated the lights hit the trees fairly easily.

XRE R2 first:



XML:



My 75W HID I just Finished:



Thanks for looking

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

WOW very nice, cant wait to see what it looks like and how its built

Sounds good! Having a few lenses that do not work well on their own I am interested to see how combinations work out.

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

Ok here are some updated shots. I didn't get to get out to the field for 350yds of range but I shot some shots in my back yard to 150 yds. Oh and I figured out how to use my camera.

First up is my first build for a control shot.

XML 250k lux

XML 750K lux

and finally the R2 I got about 1,000,0

I will post pictures of the light and show the build once I am happy with presenting it. Notice the divergence of the beam in the R2 sky shots? The system can be adjusted depending on the range of your target, and making the divergence of the beam different. This 150 yds was too close for either the XML or R2 in the last 2 sets. I will also make a trip to my field one day and take some distance shots...... my HID kits came in and I might be getting sidetracked.

Enjoy!


P.S. Lol i just noticed the lights in the house below the trees i was shooting at...... they were off then all were on.... I probably shouldnt wait till 10 to do this now I feel bad....

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

Since my project isnt ready for pictures and I dont plan to sell mine/make more I will post the source of the light.
Its an old large stage spotlight. Pretty much used for the large lens/lens housing is all.

I got a big spotlight without any bulbs at a garage sale (old Astrodome light). The one I had was made for 1000Watt halogen but the bulb was missing. It was for sale for 25 bucks. At first I didnt pay attention to it thinking it was just junk. Then I looked at the front and saw that big 'ol lens. So i said shoot..... 20 bucks I'll take it, so I got it. Now mine was a 10 degree spotlight I would imagine higher being worse for diverging. I cut mine in half and used garage door opener mounting brackets to screw the extra maglite head I had at an approximate focal point. The maglite head was mounted to the outer metal sleeve while the inner sleeve housed the lens. This lets the lens move further/closer to your light source. Now just the led behind the lens made a tiny image with high lux but even more useless than the XRE beam above. So i had a bunch of old Lenses from DX/Anchor Bay/ even tried a Mels Griot. One of the Anchor Bay lenses worked. and it collimated the light perfectedly to the next lens. Now would I have paid 100 bucks for it heck no (scared that it wouldnt work out).... I would have probably gotten a fresnel lens and built a system like i had seen before (can get huge fresnels).
In summary: half a spotlight with a big 'ol useless lens. Used a second lens to collimate it making 2 useless lenses useful. Used garage opener mounts to make it maglite adaptable. Looks like a stage spotlight with a maglite in its butt.

I will show pictures of my finished product when its done.

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

Very interesting - keep those pictures coming.

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

Hmm. Looks like maybe a 4" lens from a projector TV setup. It is amazing how well some of those can collimate. Be interesting to see what host you find for that big lens.

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

Kevin,
What is the diameter of the bezel at the largest point?

Thanks,
bigC

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

bigchelis said:

Kevin,
What is the diameter of the bezel at the largest point?

Thanks,
bigC

Click to expand...

About 7.25" I would say. I dont have the light in in front of me at the moment.

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

saabluster said:

Hmm. Looks like maybe a 4" lens from a projector TV setup. It is amazing how well some of those can collimate. Be interesting to see what host you find for that big lens.

Click to expand...

Thats exactly what the first picture I posted used for a lens. I still have a couple of those laying around trying to dream up something to do with them. The trick was getting that to mount/work with a maglite. I like to use maglites since heatsinks/switches are rather easy to mod.

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

What a fun project! And a great collection of beamshots. :thumbsup:

Best wishes,
Packleader

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

Neat project! Can't wait the see the 750K lux version. Thanks for sharing!

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

Patriot said:

Neat project! Can't wait the see the 750K lux version. Thanks for sharing!

Click to expand...

Um... it was posted up there. You may have overlooked it?

Once I finish my HID spotlight mod I am going to go out to the spot I posted above to get some more beamshots. And hopefully paint/pretty up my light for some pictures.

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

Updated photos in Post # 2

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

kjelrod0980 said:

Ok here are some updated shots. I didn't get to get out to the field for 350yds of range but I shot some shots in my back yard to 150 yds. Oh and I figured out how to use my camera.

First up is my first build for a control shot.

XML 250k lux

XML 750K lux

and finally the R2 I got about 1,000,000 lux

I will post pictures of the light and show the build once I am happy with presenting it. Notice the divergence of the beam in the R2 sky shots? The system can be adjusted depending on the range of your target, and making the divergence of the beam different. This 150 yds was too close for either the XML or R2 in the last 2 sets. I will also make a trip to my field one day and take some distance shots...... my HID kits came in and I might be getting sidetracked.

Enjoy!

-Kevin

P.S. Lol i just noticed the lights in the house below the trees i was shooting at...... they were off then all were on.... I probably shouldnt wait till 10 to do this now I feel bad....

Click to expand...

That is funny! 10:00 PM sounds like the desert here where I live. Don't worry about it Chief, I do my light tests at 03:00, and really what we do with these tests is help scare prowlers away. In fact I have caught two since 2006. Man, if I ever get something like this, the neighbors will hate me even more than they do now. Ungrateful, that is what they are...

Now...about these lenses, I have almost every lens Nikon has made in the past 20 years, and many others going back decades. What would a 600 f4 with a flashlight on the back do? I could rig up some king of Temp. adapter, but this is a lens costing over $10,000, so I have to be careful. Sure would like to try this.

Tell me more about this wonderful marriage of lenses and flashlights.

Thank you,

NR

PS...In case you still feel bad about the neighboors...When I tested my 5 Norman D24 Power Supplies with some LH2400 strobes on each one, the light was visible for miles in the Coachella Valley, Palm Desert, California. Several people showed up at my studio in the early morning hours who tracked the light down. One man told me some people in his neighborhood thought it was scary. Strange, no authority figures stopped by. I was doing this for hours, and via remote. I was also testing my radio slave system.

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

RedLed said:

That is funny! 10:00 PM sounds like the desert here where I live. Don't worry about it Chief, I do my light tests at 03:00, and really what we do with these tests is help scare prowlers away. In fact I have caught two since 2006. Man, if I ever get something like this, the neighbors will hate me even more than they do now. Ungrateful, that is what they are...

Now...about these lenses, I have almost every lens Nikon has made in the past 20 years, and many others going back decades. What would a 600 f4 with a flashlight on the back do? I could rig up some king of Temp. adapter, but this is a lens costing over $10,000, so I have to be careful. Sure would like to try this.

Tell me more about this wonderful marriage of lenses and flashlights.

Thank you,

NR

PS...In case you still feel bad about the neighboors...When I tested my 5 Norman D24 Power Supplies with some LH2400 strobes on each one, the light was visible for miles in the Coachella Valley, Palm Desert, California. Several people showed up at my studio in the early morning hours who tracked the light dhown. One man told me some people in his neighborhood thought it was scary. Strange, no authority figures stopped by. I was doing this for hours, and via remote. I was also testing my radio slave system.

Click to expand...

I always got the impression that no matter how good the lenses you put in front of the LED it comes down to 3 main factors(listed in order of importance).
1: Size (most important, bigger the better, makes the LED more of a point source)
2: Quality (minimizes light losses)
3: Focal length (Large focal lengths allow more light to escape before reaching the focal point) This was the problem with the large lens I had on the front of this spotlight. I added another lens to shorten the focal length. It also made the size of the beam larger. I lost some lux do to the quality of lenses (not scientific/lab quality). If they were perfect lenses I would assume that you wouldnt lose any lux at all and just see in increase in collimated light to the large primary lens.

I would just screw a bezel off of an led light you have and hold it behind the lens. Be insanely careful with something like that because of the cost but I wouldnt imagine it having insane results. I think the key to this science is pretty much finding the biggest/best quality lens you can (usually ends up being a fresnel because of size) and finding a way to get the light to hit it in a practical/efficient manner.

Update: still working on finishing up the system, Its looking better and am relieved to say it did survive a 3 foot drop to concrete..... :shakehead

Re: 750,000 lux XML Superthrower**

Thanks, I will try some tests, by the by, did any angry neighbors come to your home?

Best,

NR