Anyone still make their own lights? - Bike Forum

Re: Anyone still make their own lights?

stevied — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 07:24:14 +0000

Ah, thanks. Too shallow for the housing I've got :-(

Re: Anyone still make their own lights?

pdw — Sun, 19 Nov 2017 09:17:52 +0000

With the plastic holder on, they're 35mm diameter and 15.8mm deep. With the plastic holder removed, they're a mm or two smaller. Can measure exactly if needed.

Re: Anyone still make their own lights?

stevied — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 22:07:05 +0000

Due to minimum order quantities, I've got three spare reflectors which I'll happily part with for £5 each
What are the dimensions?

Re: Anyone still make their own lights?

stumpy01 — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 18:09:23 +0000

Ooooh. Not heard of LED-Tech.de either.

The housings on easy2led look good.

Re: Anyone still make their own lights?

5thElefant — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 18:03:41 +0000

I’be always used led-tech.de. Got a pile of bits for my next build from them recently.

Re: Anyone still make their own lights?

snaps — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 18:02:12 +0000

They've been popular on mtbr for a while

Re: Anyone still make their own lights?

stumpy01 — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 17:59:23 +0000

Cheers. I've got some old Taskled drivers. The original bflex or perhaps b2flex...can't remember.
I normally use Cutter for LEDs.

Not heard of easy2led before. Gonna go and investigate!

Re: Anyone still make their own lights?

pdw — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 14:05:40 +0000

Sure. It was a truly international effort: Drivers are direct from TaskLED in the US. Housing is from Easy2LED in Russia. LED from FastTech in Singapore.

Reflectors (CA12881 MINNIE-M), power connector and button are all from RS.

Due to minimum order quantities, I've got three spare reflectors which I'll happily part with for £5 each.

Sourcing the LEDs is a bit of a minefield. Apparently fake Crees are now common place and whilst FastTech certainly have form for selling torches claiming to have Cree LEDs when they're not, I've not found any suggestion that the individual LEDs aren't legit. It certainly seems to put out about the right amount of light.

Re: Anyone still make their own lights?

stumpy01 — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 12:11:03 +0000

Nice! Where was all that from? Do you mind posting a link?

Re: Anyone still make their own lights?

pdw — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 10:37:09 +0000

Little parcel from Singapore finally arrived so I now have this:

http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/images/easy2led/IMG_20171117_222613.jpg

Easy2led housing, Cree XHP70.2, h6flex driver and Ledil Minnie optic. 6V LED at 5A should be good for about 4000 lumens.

Housing is a neat design with screw in pill for the driver and LED. One side of the pill is a flat surface, intended to take the LED, and the other is recessed for the driver, to maximise surface area in contact with the casing. The only issue is that the h6flex is too big to fit in the recessed side, so you have to run the pill backwards with the LED in the recessed side. This probably rules out triple LED setups.

http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/images/easy2led/IMG_20171117_194358.jpg

I ordered reflectors with a plastic holder, but it turns out that the recess on the pill is just slightly too deep to clear the lip on the plastic holder, so that got butchered so that only the base remained (the black plastic bit in the photo), and further butchered to clear the wires on the PCB.

The h6flex still needs some gentle filing to clear the wires going through the pill (thanks to this MTBR thread for figuring out that this was possible.

http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/images/easy2led/IMG_20171117_214115.jpg

Not had a chance to try it in anger, but initial impressions are very good. I went for a 4000K LED rather than the pure/cold white LEDs in my other lights. It was warmer than I was expecting, but I think it might work well in practice.

Obviously cooling is an issue. The casing is significantly larger and more solid than a lumicycle can, and has a much greater surface area in contact between the heatsink pill and the casing, which is always going to be the weak point with a removable pill.

At room temperature in still air it lasts 2m15s before the thermal protection kicks in set at 70 degrees, which seems OK (5A => 30W). The lumicycle light manages 1m40s running at 22.5W.