Bright LED

Don Foreman · 2007-02-26T07:22:47+00:00

I'm playing with a Luxeon K2 LED that I finally was able to glom as anobody. It is impressive. It produces 130 lumens. Most tactical raillights produce 90 lumens or less, using xenon bulbs that last formaybe 10 hours and fail catastrophically at end of life by burning outupon turnon -- which is exactly when they're needed and not anopportune time to be screwing around changing bulbs. "Please hold,Mr Tango, I need to replace my flashlight bulb". Yoo betcha boika,I'll grab a smoke, yust holler ven yoore ready to resume da dance...An LED is essentally immune to recoil while a hot filament is fragilethough the tac-light guys do seem to have solved that issue. Beyondthat, LED's do not fail catastrophically, just dim to 70% after 50Khours of service or so. I don't know if there is a measure for dazzle power, but brightness isclearly a factor and I think color is also. The K2 is bright white,6500K color temp or so, about that of sunlight while the hottest xenonbulb is maybe 3200K with fresh batteries. I dare not look at thissucker head on, but even looking at it bareassed and sideways (10%max off angle intensity) has me seeing spots for several minutesafterwards, and a collimator or reflector significantly intensifieson-axis intensity. I think it would not only be dazzling butdownright painful for young night-adapted eyes. I've always thoughtof railmount tac lights as an excellent target, but I think thissucker is so bright it would cause dazzle, blink or involuntarylook-away, any of which work. SWAT and spec ops guys tend not to be innovators for good reason:trust what has proven to work in shit sits because a firefight is nota good venue for experiments. DOD does research because they havethe budget for field trials, though the results are often seriouslycontaminated by political matters, e.g. the Beretta M9 sidearm. Ididn't like the M1911A1 as my assigned sidarm at all, but I'd sure ashell choose that over the freakin' M9 any day. ...

Bright LED

Feb 26, 2007 23 Replies

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dan 19 years ago

What's that Lassie? You say that Don Foreman fell down the old rec.crafts.metalworking mine and will die if we don't mount a rescue by Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:15:43 -0600:

Lots of good info at:

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And you can get drop in LED modules for you 2AA mini maglite at:

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under "drop in sandwiches")

I even designed an LED light around one of these modules.

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Wild Bill 19 years ago

My AVG anti-virus program reported a virus: Agent.AV on each of the photofanatic pages.

WB metalworking projects

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dan 19 years ago

What's that Lassie? You say that Wild Bill fell down the old rec.crafts.metalworking mine and will die if we don't mount a rescue by Tue, 6 Mar 2007 11:34:26 -0500:

I don't own or run that page. You might want to tell snipped-for-privacy@photonfanatic.com about it.

Dan.

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Wild Bill 19 years ago

I wasn't trying to suggest that the alerts on those webpages were any responsibility of yours, Dan.

When I encounter these types of problems at commercial websites, I assume that they're intentional, or just a result of poor site development/monitoring. I don't bother to take the time to write emails to let webmasters know that I don't appreciate all the crap they use to try to market their products. If I encounter difficulty trying to see their products, I find that it's easier to go look at someone elses' products.

WB metalworking projects

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