Tweet
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:
\
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..
250! what do you plan to do with them all!(are they on sale at another site? they all look to be the same price at led supply..)
Comment