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View Full Version : Color blending optic for LedEngin



TroyO
09-16-2009, 09:42 AM
http://www.ledengin.com/products/lenses/LLSP-1T06-H.pdf
http://www.ledengin.com/products/lenses/LLSP-2T06-H.pdf

15 and 18 degree color mixing lenses for the LedEngin 10W LED's.

They are unfortunatley just a little big for our purposes, BUT... it may be possible to cut them down just a bit on a lathe? I'm sure they lose some effeciency but would maybe work better than the commonly used K2 optic?

DJMoonbass
09-16-2009, 10:07 AM
these have been discussed before.... and no dude you cant turn the lens down on a lathe.... they would be useless... and you would pretty much FUBAR them

Jedi-Loreen
09-16-2009, 10:07 AM
Those viewing angles are kind of wide, they would probably leave the tip kind of dark.

TroyO
09-16-2009, 10:47 AM
The K2 optic works with the LedEngin 10W for solid colors, (Heh, as far as I know I was the first to do it.)
http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com/showthread.php?t=4637

I haven't had a chance to try an RGBA LedEngin with the K2 optic. I kind of suspect the colors would be banded. (IE... red on right/blue on left of blade instead of getting purple)

Anyway... do you have a link to thread where they were discussed? I searched "LedEngin optic" before I posted, and came up with some random mentions but not a real discussion of them.

Why couldn't you turn the lens down on a lathe? It appears that one of them is a reflective cone... you'd have less sidewall but the part of it that does the most "work" is towards the center. It would certainly be less effecient than the unmodified one, but still perhaps better than the K2 which wasn't designed for color mixing at all.

The other optic (with the waffle texture) may be a solid hunk of clear plastic (Instead of hollow inside with the waffle filter glued to to top) which you could also turn down some.... with the same results on loss of efficiency, though.

Hmmm, for that matter... I wonder what kind mad science is involved in designing/making your own optic... the basic shapes aren't that hard to do on a lathe. Ehhh, probably it would be easier to modify the K2 optic to mix colors better... frost the top maybe?

Onli-Won Kanomi
09-16-2009, 03:04 PM
There is actually a fair amount of '"mad science" involved in optics...in fact it is one of the earliest and most fundamental sciences; it was Western discovery of Muslim optics texts in the libraries of reconquered Moorish Spain cities that began the Renaissance and the development of modern Science [there's a great episode of one of James Burke's "Connections" series that explains that] so optics has been a 'Big Deal' for a looong time.

We've got some great technical people in this hobby with mad skillz in mechanical and electrical engineering and electronics that have brought this hobby far in a short time and kudos to them but it would be of great benefit to the whole hobby if we could get an OPTICAL engineer 'hooked on sabers' because moving forward we are going to need one to develop custom optics that can really leverage the potential of the next-gen LEDs.

I recently got properly 'schooled' on FX sabers because I had not completely appreciated the optics performance practical impact on the new LEDs for our specific purpose of getting all those theoretically-brighter extra lumens down a short tight tube [blade]. Theoreticians must yield to experimentalists, science to engineering - ceteris paribus & mutatis mutandis eh?

Take the 10W LEDEngins for example...I was informed that they are designed to focus at 10 FEET...this kinda makes sense when you consider that the majority of the LED companies market is for signage, jumbotrons etc...so thats what THEIR optical engineers are going to design optics for...and for those applications WIDE viewing angles are design targets...not 'light in a tight tube'...ceteris is not paribus for our rather specialized application of their technology.

We are just too 'niche' for them to design specific optics ideally optimized for us...so we need a good optical engineer of our own IN this hobby motivated to do that for him/herself and us all...fabrication would probably be doable for the skilled machinists in the hobby but the optical engineering may take some 'mad science' by an expert who could design things like multi-lens-element focusing systems, faceted reflectors and prisms, fresnel rings etc optimized for us saberfans not the LED companys major markets.

If anyone knows any optical engineers build them a saber and get them hooked and, mutatis mutandis, we'll all be grateful eh?

TroyO
09-16-2009, 03:26 PM
Hehehe, yeah.... or I wonder what it may take to group-buy some effective optical design of our own? http://patmullins.com/index.html

I was poking around... from what I can gather on another forum dedicated to flashlights the general idea is a parabolic reflector, with a deep "pocket" as opposed to a spherical type reflector may help to wrangle some decent portion of those photons in the correct way... we actually don't want focus so much as photons shooting out in as paralell a fashion as we can get. That's actually a BAD idea for a flashlight (Tight beam only illuminates small circle... you want some spill) but would be exactly what we want.

On the flip side.... a parabolic tip to reflect back with a 1/4 blade length focus point would maybe help to fill in the mid-blade point?

Ahhh well, all random supposition... but I'm interested enough to maybe try a blade holder with as close as I can get to parabolic mirror with a .8 inch width.

I'll have to figure out the basics enough to calculate a close-ish shape.

Malaki Skywalker
09-18-2009, 04:48 AM
Ok, I think I've solved the optics problem. The Cree MC-E LED has near the same dimensions as the 10 Watt, so, I had a look for some Optics and founds these bad boys: http://www.polymer-optics.co.uk/Cree%20MC-E%20Optics%20Range.pdf

Cree MC-E Dimensions: 7.0 x 7.5 x 4.4 (L x W x H)

LedEngin 10W Dimensions: 7.0 x 7.0 x 4.3 (L x W x H)

So if you find some more Cree MC-E Optics, might be worth trying.

Hope this helps

Malaki

FenderBender
09-18-2009, 01:57 PM
We ordered some, let you know how they work.....

TroyO
09-18-2009, 02:22 PM
For some reason I can't get that link to come up... DNS errors.

Anyway.. posted a bunch of optics in another thread.

This one in particular is exactly the parabolic reflector type shape I was talking about trying... I wonder if I can just scale it up if it would work?

http://www.dialight.com/Assets/Brochures_And_Catalogs/Illumination/MDEXLUMREB10MM.pdf