Fall 2016 Seattle Are Get together

Are you interested in going to a Portland Area Get Together?

  • Yes, September?

    Votes: 3 50.0%
  • Yes, October?

    Votes: 2 33.3%
  • No

    Votes: 1 16.7%
  • yes, mid month

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • yes, end of month

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Yes, other time

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    6

LightSward

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
1,164
Location
Portland, Oregon
Just throwing this out there for Fall 2016...Another Get Together. Been a couple seasons since last one. Time to check out some of my new searchlight equipment.
Maybe a Fall 2016 get together for this:
The telescope reflector version of the 36 inch Gorilla is moving along. Not sure what to call it, Monster Jr., the New Gorilla, etc. Bottom picture you can see the two high powered searchlights together before beam shots are taken soon.

High powered stuff..!

More progress:

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Searchlight reflecting sky to light

Nice view of the searchlight and cooling equipment.




A little closer to see the cooling fans

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Close-up Searchlight

Searchlight getting closer to completion. Cooling fans installed. My usual Home Depot $15.00 bath fans. To get twice the CFM capacity, most fan makers charge up to 10 X higher, so I just buy two.

Will fire up both of these at the same time for a total output of 8,000 watts HMI, equivalent to 24,000 watts incandescent of Xenon. 385,000 lumen output each for a TOTAL: 770,000 LUMEN..! That's bright..!





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Old and New generations:wave::tired:
The old and new high powered telescope style searchlights.:) Notice the difference in the mirror orange peel effect from Fiberglas to aluminum with it's much smoother finish. Hopefully makes a nicer beam..!

Will keep things posted as I make progress.

About to test.

2016 Get Together ideas.
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LightSward

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
1,164
Location
Portland, Oregon
Those are looking great! Why wait until fall though?


:cool: Why in deed...? No real reason, mostly the late nights; this time of year, not dark until 10:00pm. Also, I'm not totally finished yet, though hopefully within the next month should be finished. A Summer showing could be feasible....Any ideas anyone.? A 6,000 wat power supply would make not having to haul the generator around. May help for location purposes, could drive a little further. Can't haul things too far, is my main problem. I live on the West side of Beaverton, in Aloha.


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How it looked on temporary stands Mid May, 2016.:laughing:


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chizel

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Dec 1, 2006
Messages
99
Location
Seattle area
Hey I have a ~270 CFM blower fan that may interest you! Salvaged it from some old equipment. It's a cage that blows through a hole about 4"x4". 120v at less than 1 amp. I've been trying to think of a good application but keep coming back to your lights!
 

LightSward

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
1,164
Location
Portland, Oregon
Hey I have a ~270 CFM blower fan that may interest you! Salvaged it from some old equipment. It's a cage that blows through a hole about 4"x4". 120v at less than 1 amp. I've been trying to think of a good application but keep coming back to your lights!

What's the price..?

Tested the 36 inch Aluminum reflector searchlight and was thrilled but not totally satisfied with clarity of image. Am removing reflector, (pain in the azz, integrated construction design), to make minor adjustments on the reflector to make it a perfectly sharp, focused image of the arc tube. Reflector made a blurry image and not totally culminated. Could use a decent blower. Use Home Depot cheapo bath fans.

Let me know..:)
 

LightSward

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
1,164
Location
Portland, Oregon
Set up and tooled my shop to make a nice range of reflectors anywhere from 24 inch, 36 inch Gorilla Reflector up to a 50 inch Monster or any size in this whole range made now from aluminum with polished aluminum, nice but pricey, all with precision geometric control, integrating CAD control in the forming of the reflector. Been real busy doing things I needed to do with little time to posts. Am making huge progress on this and will get back to posting more as I get some time. This is going to be awesome. Hopefully I'll have something worth showing when the time comes. This weekend I could be ready for another test. Thanks Chizel, and everyone else.
 

LightSward

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
1,164
Location
Portland, Oregon
Slow progress perfecting the optics using some newly developed fabrication procedures. Hope to have something promising last year...soon.
 

LightSward

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
1,164
Location
Portland, Oregon
Been real busy, so progress has been slow on the reflector focusing. See several people have voted for a September Get together. Not sure I can have anything ready to show by then as I have been slowed trying to eliminate the "three focus points" problem I'm having. Most of the reflector does well focusing a nice beam, yet some of the reflector gets just a tiny bit off and I have a small double ring of off focus light. Anyway, October would give me more time to try and get something ready that may be more impressive than just my pocket light..LOL.
 

msim

Enlightened
Joined
Jul 6, 2012
Messages
406
Location
Seattle, WA
Depending on where the date ends up falling, I may be in! Looking forward to meeting other flashaholics.
 

LightSward

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
1,164
Location
Portland, Oregon
Still aiming for October or late September...with some delays. All my searchlights are in various stages of work, some because I had to cannibalize parts due to hard to find items or costs. I'm hoping to get everything back together and fixed because of some minor design issues, I'm a few months behind, and work obligations are filtering in.

Was getting a bit cocky and maybe even slacking...lazy, but I thought the lower portion of the Parabolic shape was spherical enough to where I could get by just using a large compass to draw the profile for ease. Using the supercomputer, (AutoCAD on home PC and MAC) a few months back, the resolution was with thick lines so I missed the error of the slightly misaligned curves. After checking why I was having two or three slightly different focal points on my homemade reflectors, I realized the resolution wasn't fine enough to reveal the misalignment on the lower arc portion...how ever slight, was making for a fatter beam.. Have ordered new materials and hope to receive them in the next week or so and try...for the fourth time to make that "perfectly focused" aircraft aluminum reflector that is almost in my grasp. Some of you probably noted the slight error, and let me roll with it not mentioning it because of my strong personality and my kind of Hill Billy style of making reflectors entirely from scratch and design too, a bit off the "cuff". Hope to have an awesome, not just kind of awesome searchlight soon, in time for some light shows.:cool::naughty: The alignments are so minor to through everything off.

Just a heads up:If a Worse case scenario I'll have a show here in the Portland area during the Winter if I can't get these relatively minor issues resolved in a timely manner.:faint::sigh::sick2::naughty::drool::thinking::twothumbs:cool::sick::caution::tinfoil:
 

LightSward

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
1,164
Location
Portland, Oregon
Currently three searchlights are in final to near final stages of construction. Several, minor, yet very pesky and demoralizing design flaws and focus issues made it difficult to achieve my desired results. I'm only three months behind schedule. I'd still like to aim for a possible show in October if these next few weeks finally give me something fantastic for my efforts...getting close. Transporting the near finished project(s) is of concern and much of the time working on the searchlights is used making the 'product' "Hardened", to withstand normal handling and transportation along with vibration and shock so time is spent securing all critical aspects.
Thanks for patience.
 

LightSward

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
1,164
Location
Portland, Oregon
I'm having pretty good success with my searchlights yet I don't have anything I want to brag about and show but anyone in the Portland area I'll show some, and I've got so many searchlights in progress right now I'm just not going to be ready I'll be for fall 2016, so I'm going to aim for spring 2017 Yahoo
 

LightSward

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
1,164
Location
Portland, Oregon
I'm having pretty good success with my searchlights yet I don't have anything I want to brag about and show but anyone in the Portland area I'll show some, and I've got so many searchlights in progress right now I'm just not going to be ready I'll be for fall 2016, so I'm going to aim for spring 2017 Yeah. .:cool::twothumbs
 

LightSward

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
1,164
Location
Portland, Oregon
Making the progress now, I had anticipated for back in June. Here is some of the things I'm getting caught up on.

2017 Get together is more likely since I'm getting things finished now.

Here is the new line of aluminum searchlights, this being a new aluminum version of the 36 inch Gorilla. I've made deep dish reflectors too, and am fine tuning them. Hoop shape and calibration very important. I paid the machining price not realizing just how important those were.

After fine tuning several reflectors and even making a deep dish reflector to be revealed soon;, I've more or less gotten better at these aluminum reflectors
picture shows: Searchlight coming to life during daytime test


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New all Aluminum 36 inch 4,000 watt HMI Searchlight for Halloween



:cool:
Powerful beam as seen from behind searchlight. Beam can be seen for 5 miles distance.

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New all Aluminum 36 inch 4,000 watt HMI Searchlight for Halloween⤡

Beam from behind searchlight. Beam can be seen five miles distance or more
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New all Aluminum 36 inch 4,000 watt HMI Searchlight for Halloween:candle:

Powerful 380,000 lumen beam stabbing the night sky for five miles and can be seen all over town
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Beam seen close by as cars started rolling by.

Beam seen half a block away
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Light can be seen almost focused, yet hard to do with such hot equipment






Searchlight seen across the street warming up with color bands formed by camera interaction with 60 hertz / 120 flickers per second.


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36 inch aluminum searchlight warming up

Searchlight as seen from a couple blocks away as seen through trees and rain patterns

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Light beam looks incredible during rain...rainbows and different light patterns. :):eek:





Searchlight cooling down.

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Cooling down bulb takes about a minute to stop making any light.
 
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