not really sure why...
So a typical 65w halogen car hi beam is around 1700 lumens of light output. This flashlight will be 150w of high efficiency LED, spewing forth 15,000 lumens of white light.
The plan originally was to make an offroad driving light, so I got this ridiculous flashlight that has fifteen Cree XM-L T6 emitters (each emitter is capable of producing up to a rated 1040 max lumens). I was just going to provide the required power and control and use it for the waterproof flashlight head. For now, the heat management issues at 150 watts cause too many problems with running it continuously, so I'm probably going to make it a flashlight.
Out of the chinese box, this flashlight runs on four 18650 or 26650 lithium cells, which due to the way this light is designed is only enough power to run it at around 15 watts or 1500 lumens (or 10% of what the LEDs are rated for).
More emitters must mean more light, right? a simple sales gimmick as expected. This simply will not do.
The 15 LEDs are arranged in a 5s3p configuration requiring around 17volts @ 9amps for full power. For a power source I'm going to run one or two R/C lipo packs which are 11.1v 3s 2200mAh, and have a continuous discharge rating of 44amps. This will give a runtime of about 5 minutes per pack at full power.
LED's require a constant current power source, not constant voltage like a battery, so I have to design and build a regulated constant current driver which will boost the lower voltage battery and supply the desired 9 amps. The driver works by charging and discharging an inductor 100,000 times per second and adding the discharge voltage spike to the input 11 volts to produce a high DC output voltage than the input. As with all power electronics the tricky part is the control circuitry; in this case a feedback loop needs to regulate the output current in real time and prevent things from exploding. Anyway it's all still in the early prototype stage.
Here is a beam shot comparison... same exposure on both photos.
Above is a bright flashlight with one of these same emitters runnning at about 4 watts or 500 lumens because of a slightly low battery.
And the 15 emitter light running at only 100 watts (67% power) and around 10,000 lumens
So a typical 65w halogen car hi beam is around 1700 lumens of light output. This flashlight will be 150w of high efficiency LED, spewing forth 15,000 lumens of white light.
The plan originally was to make an offroad driving light, so I got this ridiculous flashlight that has fifteen Cree XM-L T6 emitters (each emitter is capable of producing up to a rated 1040 max lumens). I was just going to provide the required power and control and use it for the waterproof flashlight head. For now, the heat management issues at 150 watts cause too many problems with running it continuously, so I'm probably going to make it a flashlight.
Out of the chinese box, this flashlight runs on four 18650 or 26650 lithium cells, which due to the way this light is designed is only enough power to run it at around 15 watts or 1500 lumens (or 10% of what the LEDs are rated for).
More emitters must mean more light, right? a simple sales gimmick as expected. This simply will not do.
The 15 LEDs are arranged in a 5s3p configuration requiring around 17volts @ 9amps for full power. For a power source I'm going to run one or two R/C lipo packs which are 11.1v 3s 2200mAh, and have a continuous discharge rating of 44amps. This will give a runtime of about 5 minutes per pack at full power.
LED's require a constant current power source, not constant voltage like a battery, so I have to design and build a regulated constant current driver which will boost the lower voltage battery and supply the desired 9 amps. The driver works by charging and discharging an inductor 100,000 times per second and adding the discharge voltage spike to the input 11 volts to produce a high DC output voltage than the input. As with all power electronics the tricky part is the control circuitry; in this case a feedback loop needs to regulate the output current in real time and prevent things from exploding. Anyway it's all still in the early prototype stage.
Here is a beam shot comparison... same exposure on both photos.
Above is a bright flashlight with one of these same emitters runnning at about 4 watts or 500 lumens because of a slightly low battery.
And the 15 emitter light running at only 100 watts (67% power) and around 10,000 lumens
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