Musical flashlight from hell... now with fire!

Bimmerboy

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Update 5-28-15: Decided to start my fire pit by different means the other night. MUAH HA HA HAAAAAA!! See post 11.


From the fiery depths of parts-scattered-all-over-the-house purgatory, an evil beast has risen, and it sings of retinal damnation. Its name is............. Beelzebulb. :devil:

I've had the parts for this thing, including a programmed JimmyM PhD-D1 regulator laying around for SIX YEARS, always wanting to get around to building it, and life always getting in the way. However, Jimmy did a D1 giveaway contest last summer which I entered, and won a unit. He had mentioned the capability of the D1 to vibrate the filament at varying pitches, and that it could be programmed to sing a melody. So, a couple months later I contacted him about this, and he spent a lot of time PM'ing with me, programming, and testing. This was during Nov/Dec 2014, and it's now April already, so I really needed to make good on Jimmy's work and generosity. The end result turned out even better than I hoped for.

Here it is singing the chorus to "I'll See the Light Tonight" by Yngwie Malmsteen, then turning itself on to unleash its 5,000+ lumen fury.



The specs:

4D Maglite shell... red, of course
Custom programmed PhD-D1, of course
5 X AW IMR 26500
Borofloat lens from Flashlightlens
Fivemega MOP reflector, possibly a "NewGen"
Kiu stainless LP bezel
Kiu high temp socket
Osram 64623 100W bulb overdriven to 15.2V (about 155W)
Switch modified to momentary only for safety reasons... functions as a dead man switch
Have not done low resistance tail mods yet... coming this weekend.

There is one problem to be dealt with. The filament height requires the head to be screwed out way past the o-ring in order to hit the reflectors' focal point, which leaves the head loose, and a little wobbly. The only way I see solving this is with shorter standoffs for the Kiu socket. Gotta' see if such things exist as the head really needs to just cover that o-ring with the bulb in focus, and this mod will be pretty much perfected.

It's a devilishly handsome flashlight, I must say.
beelzebulb1.jpg


beelzebulb2.jpg


In addition to all the members whose excellent offerings played a part in making this build possible, and a very high quality one at that, a special HUGE thanks goes to JimmyM for providing the means, and the extra time it took to allow Beelzebulb to realize his full potential as a true Prince of Darkness. He will be busy terrorizing the neighborhood after the sun has fallen.

Thread coming soon on his little brother, Lumifer. :devil:
 
Last edited:

Str8stroke

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Re: Musical flashlight from hell

Ok, so I got to make sure I am reading & hearing this correctly, the bulb is playing music? LOL Lumen insanity.
 

Bimmerboy

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Dec 30, 2004
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Re: Musical flashlight from hell

Ok, so I got to make sure I am reading & hearing this correctly, the bulb is playing music? LOL Lumen insanity.
Hahaha... you are correct, and thanks!

Lol...reminds of 8 floppy drive music
Just looked up floppy drive music. No freakin' way!... LOL. Totally awesome.

Insanely cool.

Thank you! I'm absolutely enjoying having this thing around, and it's inspiring me to put the next batch of parts together, which will be another heavy duty incan; a thrower this time to show the LEDs and HIDs that bulbs ain't quite ready to give up the fight.

Several of my LED flashlights play the Imperial Theme from Starwars (inspired by floppy music): Fun with PWM
Love that vid, and your super cool utilization of the photoacoustic effect.
 

nbp

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Re: Musical flashlight from hell

I've never seen such a thing. Awesome!
 

JimmyM

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Aug 30, 2006
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Boston, MA, USA
Re: Musical flashlight from hell

I like that Imperial march light. This light uses magnetostriction to cause the filament to vibrate at the PWM frequencies due to the sharp rise is current when the FET switches on. Same effect that causes a transformer to hum.
 

Bimmerboy

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Dec 30, 2004
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Long Island, NY
This was too surprising, and fun to not post about.

This past Memorial Day, I did a little firepitting, and decided to start it using Beelzebulb. He hadn't done the 'lighting paper on fire' test yet, and though I knew it would work, I wasn't prepared for the speed in which the paper went up. Even more amazing to me, is I realized later on that the bulb was way out of focus. I haven't bought shorter standoffs for the Kiu socket yet, and forgot to screw the head far out before taking the video. This thing is a beast!



This was using crumpled newspaper blackened up with some Sharpie. The next fire test will be with a brown paper bag left outside on a humid night, which will simulate the material I used my Mag85 on years ago. I'll probably fry an egg too... lol. More video to come!
 

JimmyM

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Aug 30, 2006
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Nice. My old Mag458 (64458 bulb at 20V, ~=210W) would start white paper on fire in no more than 2 seconds. I did it in my company office one day. My co-workers were floored. Now they always joke when I have a flashlight that they need to be careful because it starts fires.
 

Bimmerboy

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Joined
Dec 30, 2004
Messages
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Location
Long Island, NY
Nice. My old Mag458 (64458 bulb at 20V, ~=210W) would start white paper on fire in no more than 2 seconds.
LOL... now THAT's power! Add my Mag85 to this one and it still doesn't match the wattage. If I get the urge to join the 200W club, I'll likely do it with a 458 as I hear axial filaments are better for throw, and I just happen to have a FM Throwmaster laying in wait, though it'll have to share duty with the FM1909 being built soon.

Nice! I've always wanted to build something like that...
Go for it! Everything needed in terms of parts are all still available... just need a different battery scheme than mine. I dread the day of needing to figure out a solution for my AW 26500 builds once those IMR's get too old. Really not diggin' the idea of longer cells.
 
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