[ale] way OT amazing new LED flashlight technology

[David Tomaschik]

This is the flashlight you want:
http://elektrolumens.com/FireSword/FireSword-IV.html

A power outage will suddenly become a sunny day at the beach!

David


On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 8:09 PM, Alex Carver <agcarver+ale at acarver.net> wrote:
> On 9/17/2012 21:16, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>>I bought the Nebo 5610 220 Lumen Redline Tactical at Batteries Plus.  This unit costs about $30.  They warrant the unit for life.  It has a very bright LED emitter called a Cree.  I haven't done research into the merits of this, but it IS very bright.
>
> Cree isn't a type of LED, it's the name of a major manufacturer of LEDs
> and other devices (the other major manufacturer is Philips Lumileds
> which makes the Luxeon brand of emitters).  Cree is based out of North
> Carolina and their primary area of expertise is in silicon carbide (SiC)
> based devices (of which certain types of blue and ultraviolet LEDs are
> made).  The LED in your flashlight is one of their UV models (probably
> an XLamp if it's a recently designed flashlight) down-converted to white
> using phosphor coatings (look closely at the LED (with the power off of
> course!) and you should see a pale yellow dot in the center -- that's
> the phosphor bead).  This UV-phosphor design is currently the most
> common white LED.
>
> Cree's emitter gets its big power because SiC can handle very high
> temperatures without degrading but it does require a flashlight that is
> built properly to support a large LED like that.  SiC LEDs can pump out
> many watts of heat into their heatsinks.  Junction temperatures (the
> temperature at the diode chip inside) can reach over 150 degrees Celsius.
>
> Cheaper flashlights or replacement modules use lower power LEDs because
> of the heatsink requirement.  They either don't have any heat sinking to
> keep manufacturing costs and retail price low or, in the case of the
> replacement modules, the flashlight doesn't have the proper design for
> keeping the diode cool since it was an incandescent bulb originally.
>
> Enjoy the flashlights.  :)  LEDs have made some nice progress in the
> last few years.  I've got the LED Maglite (made with an LED from the
> start that also does the SOS flashing), and several LED desk/task lamps
> that work quite well.
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-- 
David Tomaschik
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http://systemoverlord.com
david at systemoverlord.com