andrewwynn
Flashlight Enthusiast
Class 2: \"Megasonic\"
Here are the details of the "Megasonic".
When i discovered Luxeons last summer I was determined to modifiy my drill lantern since the batteries have like a 200W+ capability, combined with the large head, it's a perfect blend.
I bought a couple 4.5" square x 1" thick heatsinks last aug on eBay.
enter: loooong pause... I had to wait for Lumiled to invent the Lux3 ;-) and in april when I discovered the Lux3 and the CPF.. it re-kindled the fire inside.
So.. I bought some emitters, and reflectors (SO17XA) the xa is for x-tra awesome, and a BuckPuck buck driver 1000mA model with the external pot for brightness.
I built a 'breadboard' of the parts, just setting the emitters on the square heatsink..
I was able to dim the 3 emitters down to about 30mA and maxxed out just shy of 1000mA.
Naturally.. to make this work, I had to get the monster heatsink into the light... so after about 40 minutes with a sawzall and a belt sander, i turned it into something resembling a round 4 1/2 inch heatsink.
I had to drill holes in just the right places to power the emitters (to miss the fins)... the emitters were attached with arctic silver thermal epoxy. here is a pic of the emitters and reflectors on the heatsink:
Initially I had no place to put the pot... it actually was in the face between emitters, and also I had the driver hooked up through the built-in driver, so lost more power..and had a max output of about 9W... where the buck puck drew about 11.5 at max so that had to go..
Problem: the low-voltage cutout was built into that circuit, so i had to built a new one.
I built it with only ONE active device.. originally with (2) potentiometers and (4) resistors but did add in a third potentiometer to control the minimum brightness... way cool.. now i can run 1/4W at the emitters (total) for 7 Days straight!
You can check out the detailed pictures here.
The results?
It turned this:
into this:
You can check out all the beamshots here.
Here is the Megasonic Web Page. It inclues all the pictures i've taken of what used to be called 'MegaMod' and now is called "Megasonic" from the panasonic drill battery lantern used as the host.
I almost forgot to mention... one of the best improvements.. was BREAKING out (it was glued in) the original crappy (excuse me... VERY crappy) lens and getting a custom-built 3mm thick ultra clear glass lens from flashlightlens.com I will never make a light without one.
Where the future lead? Well... as awed as I am... just like the poll on my lux3W tasklight post shows... "if bright is good than brighter is better"... On purpose when I designed it I put the emitters spaced far enough apart i could add more emitters; originally considering doubling the emitter count to 6; imagine that! Of course that would bring the battery life down to 3hrs or so, but 360 lumens of BEE YOU TEA FULL Luxeon light... I am not sure if the heatsink can dump 20W of heat, but it does fine with 10 or so.
Being more practical... I think i'll be adding a 4th emitter because i don't have to add another Buck Puck to do so, just another series emitter... it's just begging to be done, right?
Power summary: I have it set to dim down to exactly 1/4 W total at the emitters and up to just shy of 9W... It will run 6.5Hr at full power and the heat sink never gets remotely too hot to touch, not to mention it's internal so kinda difficult to try.... at min power the math works out to 7.04Days runtime! some time I will try it out, but I can say.. that when the battery dies at full power... i can let the battery recover for 5 minutes and get 2 more hours at min power... love my light.
Well that's all folks... check out the detailed pics and captions, let me know what you think... it would not be unthinkable that i'd build one of these for an interested party it was a lot of fun to build the first one.
Here are the details of the "Megasonic".
When i discovered Luxeons last summer I was determined to modifiy my drill lantern since the batteries have like a 200W+ capability, combined with the large head, it's a perfect blend.
I bought a couple 4.5" square x 1" thick heatsinks last aug on eBay.
enter: loooong pause... I had to wait for Lumiled to invent the Lux3 ;-) and in april when I discovered the Lux3 and the CPF.. it re-kindled the fire inside.
So.. I bought some emitters, and reflectors (SO17XA) the xa is for x-tra awesome, and a BuckPuck buck driver 1000mA model with the external pot for brightness.
I built a 'breadboard' of the parts, just setting the emitters on the square heatsink..
I was able to dim the 3 emitters down to about 30mA and maxxed out just shy of 1000mA.
Naturally.. to make this work, I had to get the monster heatsink into the light... so after about 40 minutes with a sawzall and a belt sander, i turned it into something resembling a round 4 1/2 inch heatsink.
I had to drill holes in just the right places to power the emitters (to miss the fins)... the emitters were attached with arctic silver thermal epoxy. here is a pic of the emitters and reflectors on the heatsink:
Initially I had no place to put the pot... it actually was in the face between emitters, and also I had the driver hooked up through the built-in driver, so lost more power..and had a max output of about 9W... where the buck puck drew about 11.5 at max so that had to go..
Problem: the low-voltage cutout was built into that circuit, so i had to built a new one.
I built it with only ONE active device.. originally with (2) potentiometers and (4) resistors but did add in a third potentiometer to control the minimum brightness... way cool.. now i can run 1/4W at the emitters (total) for 7 Days straight!
You can check out the detailed pictures here.
The results?
It turned this:
into this:
You can check out all the beamshots here.
Here is the Megasonic Web Page. It inclues all the pictures i've taken of what used to be called 'MegaMod' and now is called "Megasonic" from the panasonic drill battery lantern used as the host.
I almost forgot to mention... one of the best improvements.. was BREAKING out (it was glued in) the original crappy (excuse me... VERY crappy) lens and getting a custom-built 3mm thick ultra clear glass lens from flashlightlens.com I will never make a light without one.
Where the future lead? Well... as awed as I am... just like the poll on my lux3W tasklight post shows... "if bright is good than brighter is better"... On purpose when I designed it I put the emitters spaced far enough apart i could add more emitters; originally considering doubling the emitter count to 6; imagine that! Of course that would bring the battery life down to 3hrs or so, but 360 lumens of BEE YOU TEA FULL Luxeon light... I am not sure if the heatsink can dump 20W of heat, but it does fine with 10 or so.
Being more practical... I think i'll be adding a 4th emitter because i don't have to add another Buck Puck to do so, just another series emitter... it's just begging to be done, right?
Power summary: I have it set to dim down to exactly 1/4 W total at the emitters and up to just shy of 9W... It will run 6.5Hr at full power and the heat sink never gets remotely too hot to touch, not to mention it's internal so kinda difficult to try.... at min power the math works out to 7.04Days runtime! some time I will try it out, but I can say.. that when the battery dies at full power... i can let the battery recover for 5 minutes and get 2 more hours at min power... love my light.
Well that's all folks... check out the detailed pics and captions, let me know what you think... it would not be unthinkable that i'd build one of these for an interested party it was a lot of fun to build the first one.
