Change lighthead on a uwld canister light

[Bison Ravi]

Does anyone here knows if it would be easy to put a different brand lighthead on a uwld canister?

The lighthead I would like to use is normally powered by a 14.4V canister. Uwld uses 18v I believe.

It would be on the latest gen 5 uwld mini canister.

Thanks for your help!



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[tbone1004]

what head would you want to put on there that UWLD doesn't have? We need to know exactly what head you want to put on there before we can say anything.

The biggest issue you will come up with is that there are no switches on the UWLD cans so the lighthead would be powered as soon as you plugged it in with no way of turning it off. The voltage will be dependent on what voltage the drivers in the head want.

 

[Bison Ravi]

Gralmarine 3xml-2. It has a switch on the lighthead


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[tbone1004]

which UWLD head do you have? That light head doesn't actually put out 4800lumen, it might have a tighter beam, but it won't have more light.

Your best bet is to ship the head to Bobby, have him put it on one of the stack caps, and send it back, if the head has voltage control in it, if it's in the battery pack, then you might be SoL

 

[Bison Ravi]

I have the ld-15. Pretty sure the gralmarine puts out more light, and has a tighter beam too.

I don't own the lighthead, but if the conversion is easy and cheap enough I might buy it.

Why do you say it doesn't put out more light?

Do the uwld lightheads have voltage control in them or in the canister?

Thanks!




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[tbone1004]

It can't put out 4800lm with 3 emitters, and it has the same beam pattern as your LD15 for reference, but it will have more light than the 15. I would see what it would cost to upgrade your LD15 to the LD35 first and go from there. 6* vs 8* provides much more usable light for the majority of divers....

Beam Angle: Fact & Fiction | Underwater Light Dude
read that.

 

[Bison Ravi]

Thanks for the link. Even if in theory or even in practice the uwld more uniform beam pattern is superior, for my needs, I prefer a tighter beam with less of a halo.

On the other hand, IMHO, the canister is superior to all the others I've seen.



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---------- Post added October 15th, 2015 at 03:42 PM ----------

Also, I've looked into the conversion to a ld-35 and it would not be cheap. Also it would have an even wider beam...


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[Bobby]

Bison,
The reason that tbone is saying that it isn't putting out that many Lumen is because the XML-2 is only capable of putting out just over 3500 Lumen without being over driven with 3 LED's. If the XML LED's are over driven they burn out rather quickly. We don't over drive any of our products however we do testing to know how certain LED's will handle over driving them. The XML's do not tolerate being over driven well. The cost in power consumption versus light output gets exponentially worse as you drive them past their capability as well. We have found that over driving XML's by only 10% that they begin to burn out and reduce light output quickly. 4800 Lumen is 27% above the XML capability which we would expect to burn the LED's out quickly. The math does not seem right either. They claim 4800 Lumen @ 54w which is 44% more power consumption over the maximum for the XML's. I would expect a much higher power consumption to reach the claimed Lumen output.

The cost to retrofit your LD-15 to an LD-35 is $350 US. The beam is slightly wider however we have found, through testing, that a narrower beam with more light output pushes beyond our capability to see that far in water. I know that the other light claims 6 degree, which is the same as our LD-15 however since their Lumen rating is highly suspect I would not be confident in their beam angle specifications either.

Our drivers are in the light head. If you wanted the other manufacturers head installed on our cap the cost would be $60 if you supply the cap and $155 if you want a new cap. This is if the light cord is the proper dimension. I looked up the light and from the pictures is appears that they may use a thinner cord then we use though it is difficult to know from pictures. We also don't know what type of driver they are using. Our drivers handle a wide range of voltage however many other drivers do not. Our battery systems are 18.5v nominal and their website states that they use 14.4v (actually 14.8v) nominal. It is possible that our battery packs could burn out their driver. You would need to contact them regarding this issue.

Let me know if there is anything else we can help you with.

 

[Bison Ravi]

Bobby, your offer is very tempting, I will have to think about it.

I'm in mexico for a month, when I come back I'll contact you if I decide to go ahead and do the retrofit.

Thanks a lot!