in progress DIY headtorch

hi guys
my other usb project remains unfinished, i have been asked to build a torch for a friend, my line of work is nightshift as much as it is dayshift, over the years ive been seen with various headtorches which have all been home made and been "wow"ed over by collegues.

So, on a request ive made another, its current state its missing a wire so completed photos are not available yet and will post soon.

I was supplied with a battery a 2s2p NMH pack at 8.4v, so the build started from there.
I decided to use an XML T6 with a Laura reflector along with a 5 mode DX driver, unfortunately no matter how much squeezing i just couldnt get the 5 mode driver to fit, as a daughter board i decided to remove it, and fit the single mode until i can find a similar spec board with a smaller stack height

Enough talking, everybody likes pics



And here we have an almost complete torch, the horseshoe you see is what holds all together, it took a long while figuring out how to do this.
There was no drawings or sketches, each part is unique and machined on the fly out of my head
as to what seemed best at the time,
The rear and front of the light head are a tight interferance fit, they can be pryed open via a smallgroove between the units, they are also stepped to aid contact surface internally

I do not have any screwcutting gears as of yet, so unable to cut threads, my faithfull and worn lathe is about 80 years old and still cuts lovely



here are all the parts

and finally the pre-assembly box


so, opinions gratefull.... more to come when i get hold of a suitable cable

Looks interesting.. Oh, "I was supplied with a battery a 2s2p NMH pack at 8.4v" doesnt make sense, do you mean li-ion battery? A 2s2p nimh battery would be 2.4v no?

ive been so busy with machining, i have assumed to battery was 2s2p, have just opened pack it is actualy 5s1p 4.5AH pack with the large sanyo cells, fresh of the charger i had 8.4v, now has settled to 6.91v, pack by SILVA

Light pretty much done and ready for testing later, thanks to Maplin for a nice cable


i decided for redundancy since there is only one mode to put 2 5mm white leds in



it still needs a going over with some steel wool but otherwise im done here

Nice work! You might mention this thread in the headlights forum... I'm sure they'd be interested.

good idea with the 5mmX2 addition of a low light level with that switch

thanks for the comments, it has had its test run and worked just fine, the head got warm as expected with a surprising ammount of heat dissipated to the body also, so that is good, i think a warmer tint would have been nicer to the eyes, also the 2 5mm LEDs could probably be direct driven as the resistor i put in seems meybe too much, so im done with testing, going to buff it up and get rid of the epoxy residue and pass it on to its owner

If you have the 5mms in parallel a 47ohm 1/4w resistor should do well for both giving 24ma per led
ledcalc.com helps with the math
I wouldn't direct drive them unless they are in series,even then your still underdriving them. Most 5mm are 3.5vf or more
6v is okay to DD on coin cells as their capacity is so low and the voltage sags under load

that is super cool!