DIY canister light question

[Sitkadiver]

There's a guy on nwdiveclub.com who is making can lights with these.

Waterproof 100 M Dive Diving Light Scuba LED Flashlight | eBay

He essentially guts the light and puts in his own led and hardware: Including heat sink, reed switch etc. I bought one off him and it works great. Only glitch with the light is I run 18650's and battery quality in an issue. I can only run on high for about 45 minutes. Runs on med(800 lumens ?) for more than 2 hours though. His handle on nwdiveclub.com is H2ODoctor. He's a real nice guy and has posted a few threads about his lights.

As far as filling a light head with mineral oil as a heat sink, I've not heard of anyone doing this. In addition to the problem of conductivity, you would have issues with thermal expansion. Heating a non-compressable oil inside a closed light head could lead to a rupture. A heat sink to the surrounding sea water works great, which is why I preferred test tube lights back in the day, they seemed to cool better.

Also brings me to another point: You could take an older light head, like an MR-16 or something and convert it to an led light. I've a seen a couple of those, but have never used one.

Good luck with your project.

 

[350xfire]

Is that a plastic head? Looks like it. If so, the main issue will be LED longevity. Plastic does not conduct heat very well and it will be a matter of time before the LED burns up.
And yes, there are a bunch of crap 18650's out there.

 

[Sitkadiver]

Roger that - Plastic head.

Have you noticed your 18650's getting hot under heavy current load? I bought some cheapos off E-Bay and they heated up something fierce.

 

[350xfire]

No haven't noticed extreme heat. How many amps you sucking out? I bought some cheap Ebay and they SUCKED!

 

[Sitkadiver]

Not sure how many amps it's pulling. I'm the end user, not builder. I was told 2.4. Out of 8 batteries from E-Bay, 3 have been tossed aside from not charging to full voltage, then running down and reacharging with same result.

The bummer for me is that I really like the 18650 - tons of juice for such a small package. Makes my battery pack easy to handle(I remember 12-70's) and you can pack extra batteries if you're going camping and what not.

Are you TLSlights? Those look sweet. 5 -7 hr. burn time? That is incredible. Who would thought we'd see lights like this 15 years ago?

 

[350xfire]

Yeah, you have some horrible batteries! I found that about $10 a pair is when they get decent.

Yes, I am TLS lights.

Thanks

 

[Packhorse]

I really good alternative to the Maglite is the Ultrafire W300. Its not quite as big as the Maglite but is already designed to be a dive light. It has a thick glass lens and a really good deep smooth reflector.

Another option is a W200. In this case swap out the reflector for a 28mm "Ahortons" aspheric lens. This makes for a really small light head. (I just made a light head with 2 W200 heads).

Either way you use just the head of the lights not the body. So fabrication of the back end of the head is still required but simple enough for someone with a thread cutting lathe.