Home depot flashlight "mod"

I was looking for and found a rear projection TV on the roadside, my daughters need a 53" magnifying lens mounted in a frame to bring ruin to leaves, pennies and any small insects that are foolish enough to get too close to a miniature death ray. I had never looked in this style of TV before and noticed they have manually adjustable lenses. An idea was born, I'm not sure that I'm the first to come up with this idea, but I came up with it on my own and I'm pretty happy with myself for thinking of it. I shined my flashlight through one of the 3 lenses and noticed that I could take a completely floody light and cast the image of the die. Sadly this only works with a single point light source. I quickly cobbled together a working prototype. It's not pretty and I scavenged the materials from the TV. I may work on a wooden body at some point, but I am pretty happy with the novelty so far. I'm going to take some pictures this afternoon. The lux within a few feet for this 650 lumen light is pretty close to daylight and the die is about 20' square at 100 yards.

Front, side and top view followed by whatever I could get with auto exposure.

Cardboard is to prevent excessive light spill because the lens is screwed on to wood and there needs to be the gap to focus the beam. Batteries are pretty well used up after a few bonfires and amusing the girls... okay, amusing myself.

Ha! that looks like too much fun.

How cool is that?!?

Is that the Defiant 3D (I believe) from HD? It has no markings on the body except for a serial number in the cup of the tailcap and a HUGE head with deep reflector.

If so, I have the same light. Managed to score it from HD on an after-xmas sale (maybe 2-3yrs ago) for something crazy like $10. It's one hell of a thrower, still impresses to this day..

Thanks for sharing!!!

Yep, that's the one, I think I paid $20. I had to remove the reflector to get a cleaner beam, it's just a bare LED "mule" to get a nice clean projection. Now that I have a few of these lenses, I'm looking for more powerful single LED lights. Thanks for the comments, I wasn't sure a 30 minute build would get any response with the level of work I see people putting out.

Skimo said:

I wasn't sure a 30 minute build would get any response with the level of work I see people putting out.

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I'm a sucker for one-off creativity. That's exactly the type of modding that inspires me to think outside of the box!

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Thanks for the cool info!!!

Thanks, with no lathe to work with, finding the appropriate material to work with had left me somewhat dependent on the very scary practice of using my table saw to cut circles in particle board and using an improvised mounting plate made of a discarded speaker washer that the cone support was riveted to, to screw to the blank off of the table saw and use my grinder as a lathe to get an ID that would press fit over my flashlight. If that sounds convoluted, it is and I wish I could post a video of the process. Suffice it to say, very labor intensive and not necessarily safe to use a grinder as a lathe considering the medium and the nature of the improvised tool rest. So, in short, I found my answer. A medium sized container for Helmans mayonnaise very nearly has a neck size that matches the OD of the flashlight and with a bit of trimming can probably be used to fit around the flashlight with judicious use of my heat gun. I wish I could paint images with words or at least show a time lapse of the process, but I can't and my extreme apologies for not being able to show my thought process 1pt21 nor the images or video. Next time I go to the store I'll be getting one of those canisters of mayo to get this done. I'll have the decency to spray paint it black and post pictures of the finished project. On a high note over the weekend I went camping with my family and another and their children asked me if I had brought the "cool flashlight". I hope my next update is more in-line with your expectations and mine.