Re: Flashlight modification
Originally posted by azfyrfyter63:<br /> ZmOz, is the conversion worth spending $30 upgrading an $8 flashlight?
Depends. You could get a 1 watt LED and get slightly brighter, much whiter light that never burns out. The battery life would be slighly less than with the stock bulb. Or you could get a 3 watt LED, which is quite a bit brighter, but you'd only get an hour or two of battery life. Also remember that any LED light doesn't throw the light as far, they're more flood.<br /><br />As far as you're concerned, I think you'd be happier with a pre made $30-50 LED light. Inova makes some pretty good quality and reasonably priced lights with Luxeon Stars in them. Don't go for any of the no name chinese lights on ebay...they're all total crap.<br /><br />If you still want to modify an existing light, a larger D or C cell Maglite would be a much better starting point. Alot more battery life and room to put electronics. I have a 3D Mag that I put rechargeable lithium ion batteries in, and a 5 watt LED. LONG run time...TONS of white light, and I can whack someone with it if I need to.
It did cost about $120 to make though. Right now I'm in the process of putting an HID light into a 5D Mag.
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Here is a pretty good page about modifying a larger Mag. If you go to flashlightlens.com you can buy an "O-sink" for $16, this is the heat sink you need to mount the LED on. Then you need to buy a 1, 3, or 5 watt Luxeon emitter, install it on the heat sink and wire it up. You will need either a resistor with a 3+ cell light, which will give you bright light at first slowly dimming over the life of the batteries (like a normal bulb) or some kind of driver circuit on a 2+ cell light. A driver circuit will increase/lower the voltage as necessary, giving you longer battery life and even light over the life of the batteries.
