Lantern Mantles? Coleman or generic?

Gunner Asch · 2008-12-31T06:44:02+00:00

Ive been home for the holidays and cleaning, tossing and reorganizing myStuff.Today I did some of the camping survival equipment and found Idaccumulated some 6 assorted naptha and propane stoves, and sigh...11Coleman lanterns of different sortsAnd 4 mantles total. I knew I was low on them, had bid on some lots on Ebay(unsucessfully)...shrugHas anyone had any experince with the generic non-Coleman brandedmantles, the Chinese ones and so forth? an example, at $2.14 a pair. Actual Colemans at$1.75 a pair...Anyone know of source of inexpensive mantles? Id like to have at least 15 pairs, 20 would be good but by the timeshipping and so forth is added, $40 adds up really quickFor stuff that is likely to be simply stored for 30 yrs then yard saledoff with the rest of my stuff by the next of kin.As someone asked on a blog...after 100 yrs, why hasnt someone invented acheap permanant mantle that doesnt bust if you set the lantern downhard?Gunner"Upon Roosevelt's death in 1945, H. L. Mencken predicted in his diarythat Roosevelt would be remembered as a great president, "maybe even alongside Washington and Lincoln," opining that Roosevelt "had every quality that morons esteem in their heroes.""

Dec 31, 2008 165 Replies

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Colonel Mustard Green 17 years ago

If you're going to the trouble of putting a switching power supply in a flashlight, might as well make it a step-up circuit that can operate from a single cell. This way, you can drain the cell completely without worrying about hurting it. (The problem with draining a series pack of cells completely is that one goes flat before the others and is damaged when the others try to charge it in reverse.)

This circuit says it will drive any LED from a single 1.2-volt cell, and that it regulates the brightness as the cell drains:

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Winston_Smith 17 years ago

There are a lot of single cell flashlights on the market and they typically have a white LED. White LEDs need about 4.5 Volts. That is exactly how they do that.

The original topic of this thread was around battery capacity. Volts can be converted as you please, but how many Amp-hours are in the battery determines the run time for any given load.

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Curly Surmudgeon 17 years ago

Interesting circuit, a strangely drawn multivibrator at its core, but would have only moderate efficiency with the bipolar transistors and large base drive. Perhaps only 60% since the 3904's have pretty poor beta gain and are relatively slow. Mosfets like the 2N7000 would be vastly superior but would require most all values changed except the inductor.

I'd suggest two cells with one of the LTC drivers that provide efficiencies of >85% plus you can program drive, in effect an intensity control, to save even more power.

If you're worried about driving one of the cells negatively just parallel both cells with a schottky diodes in reverse.

And watch out for EMI/RFI! Both circuits will yield lots of interference unless shielded.

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Bruce L. Bergman 17 years ago

If your problem is "going through" rechargeable batteries the "AA cell in a D cell adapter" solution isn't going to be much help.

The best NiMH AA cell has 1/4 the available amp-hours of power of the average alkaline primary cell, meaning it has to be recharged 4 times as often. And since each rechargeable battery has a finite life in numbers of recharges before failure...

Spend the money for the highest amp-hour D-cell NiMH cells you can find, which will be 10 AH or better. Then you get the most power with the least recharges, and also the longest overall life.

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