time to learn from my mistakes in the first build!(link)
i just got the new housings in the mail yesterday, so it's time to figure out how to make them work.
what needs to be improved:
1. one thing i didn't like about the last ones was that i could see the led's. it was cool at first, but seeing them all the time wore out the coolness pretty quick. if i make the led's visible, they need to look a lot better, and so far i don't have any idea's on how to make it look better then like i just stuffed a flashlight's guts into the housings.
so to work with that, i ordered some replacement fluted-lensed lights to try to better hide everything:
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though i'm a little concerned that the fluted lenses might hurt the light spread of my idea, so i might ditch these for a set of clear lensed variations if i can come up with a way to make it look good.
2. the other thing that i realized in the last build was that my run time estimation was way over reality. if they are on for 5 min, somethings wrong anyways and i would be happy to see the car erupt in flames...
3. and lastly, the light shape/control. having a wall of light at the back of the car is nice, but it didn't do much beyond 10-15ft. do i need more? not really, but if i'm doing it, i might as well play with beam style...
here's the [current] plan:
the housings i already mentioned to combat the poor aesthetics of the last project.
populate the housings with 3-up xp-g stars. a minimum of 2, would like 3, but if 4 fits, why not?
the outermost star will not have a optic at all-- to give a nice foreground light directly behind and to the sides of the car. i want the inner ones to have optics to shoot a little further, but am undecided on how i should go about it.. do i transition from no optic to all the other stars having a tight angle optic, or setup each star to have a slightly narrower optic and only leave the inner-most one to have the tightest optic?
i think i am going to abandon using xm-l's for now-- they are nice, but the extra heat from a single small led isn't completely worth it anymore.. i guess a 3-up xp-g star isn't going to be much better, but it's worth a shot. when playing with single-xp-g's on my bench, i was surprised how little heat they put out when you push them @750mA.. i guess much of that is due to how i only worked with xm-l's at first, but it was still kind of surprising.
another reason is the lumen output..
@700mA, the xm-l outputs 260 lumens.
@350mA, the 3-up xp-g outputs 354 lumens.
in terms of heatsinking, all the led's will share the same heatsink, i hope to fine a large panel of heatsink material that i can cut to fit. hopefully, i can also cut out some of the weight that the previous project had too much of. i haven't really looked into this too much yet, i've got to figure out what led's i want first..
so that's the plan for now.. i'll let it roll around in my head for a few days and see what falls out..
i just got the new housings in the mail yesterday, so it's time to figure out how to make them work.
what needs to be improved:
1. one thing i didn't like about the last ones was that i could see the led's. it was cool at first, but seeing them all the time wore out the coolness pretty quick. if i make the led's visible, they need to look a lot better, and so far i don't have any idea's on how to make it look better then like i just stuffed a flashlight's guts into the housings.
so to work with that, i ordered some replacement fluted-lensed lights to try to better hide everything:

though i'm a little concerned that the fluted lenses might hurt the light spread of my idea, so i might ditch these for a set of clear lensed variations if i can come up with a way to make it look good.
2. the other thing that i realized in the last build was that my run time estimation was way over reality. if they are on for 5 min, somethings wrong anyways and i would be happy to see the car erupt in flames...
3. and lastly, the light shape/control. having a wall of light at the back of the car is nice, but it didn't do much beyond 10-15ft. do i need more? not really, but if i'm doing it, i might as well play with beam style...
here's the [current] plan:
the housings i already mentioned to combat the poor aesthetics of the last project.
populate the housings with 3-up xp-g stars. a minimum of 2, would like 3, but if 4 fits, why not?
the outermost star will not have a optic at all-- to give a nice foreground light directly behind and to the sides of the car. i want the inner ones to have optics to shoot a little further, but am undecided on how i should go about it.. do i transition from no optic to all the other stars having a tight angle optic, or setup each star to have a slightly narrower optic and only leave the inner-most one to have the tightest optic?
i think i am going to abandon using xm-l's for now-- they are nice, but the extra heat from a single small led isn't completely worth it anymore.. i guess a 3-up xp-g star isn't going to be much better, but it's worth a shot. when playing with single-xp-g's on my bench, i was surprised how little heat they put out when you push them @750mA.. i guess much of that is due to how i only worked with xm-l's at first, but it was still kind of surprising.
another reason is the lumen output..
@700mA, the xm-l outputs 260 lumens.
@350mA, the 3-up xp-g outputs 354 lumens.
in terms of heatsinking, all the led's will share the same heatsink, i hope to fine a large panel of heatsink material that i can cut to fit. hopefully, i can also cut out some of the weight that the previous project had too much of. i haven't really looked into this too much yet, i've got to figure out what led's i want first..
so that's the plan for now.. i'll let it roll around in my head for a few days and see what falls out..
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