# Tritium Powered 0D Maglite



## nein166 (Jun 8, 2007)

To make the Maglite 0D I cut the bottom 1/2 inch of body tail threads off a 6D Mag that died (Duracells exploded due to water in the tube.)
Then I beveled the cut edge of the threaded ring so it would slip into the head.
I coated the first few threads in the head with epoxy and took off the bezel and lens.
Then with an old tailcap threaded onto the ring I hammered it into the head.
Wiped out excess epoxy and cut the reflector to fit, screwed on the lens and waited for [email protected] to order the sphere... waiting... waiting...
I crazy glued the sphere onto the reflector when it arrived having no more patience to wait for epoxy to dry.
Oh no its still daylight and theres windows in every room and the closets are full... Time for a blanket party.
In my childhood fortress of solitude an eeire light emerged as my eyes adjusted and BEHOLD it was worth all the wait.







*Behold the Glow!*






*Behold the Throw!*






Power Source: 18mm Green Tritium Sphere
Runtime: 12 years to 50% output
Output: 100 EGGU*

Okay so its only a few inches off the wall. The camera can't pic up the light it throws at distance. Let me just say in total darkness I can see my feet and everything thats not red in front of me. I almost tripped over the red haired cat but I evaded the black and white cat. Come to think of it I may have trouble finding my red haired girlfriend :laughing:. Reading is possible if the eyes are dark adapted.

Heres the setup in light. Pictures are 4sec exposure at F3.2 I think.






*errie green glow units


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## barkingmad (Jun 8, 2007)

Love it :twothumbs

Perhaps a tri-tritium version next?


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## Norm (Jun 8, 2007)

:twothumbs Great Job


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## carbine15 (Jun 8, 2007)

I wonder if batteries & LED's can do 12 years to 50% output (comparative brightness) in a host of that size. I bet it's possible.


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## [email protected] (Jun 8, 2007)

Good job! It might even have better "throw" than a regular tritium torch... :thumbsup:


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## Illum (Jun 8, 2007)

:wow: ...the shortest D-cell mag ever:huh:

try aspherical lens next


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## MSaxatilus (Jun 8, 2007)

Nein!!! 

Hey you got that thing completed. I remember at the last PF that you were going to build it. Looks great my friend.

MSax


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## 3rd_shift (Jun 8, 2007)

Awesome! :goodjob:
And no wiring or soldering skills were needed for this one either.


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## Tritium (Jun 8, 2007)

Illum_the_nation said:


> :wow: ...the shortest mag ever:huh:
> 
> try aspherical lens next



Not quite the shortest. I have a tritium powered light made from a AAA minimag head and tail cap assembly.

OOps, I meant Solitare head and tail.

Thurmond


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## Illum (Jun 8, 2007)

edited for clarity


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## RustyKnee (Jun 8, 2007)

*FerrkeeN awesome!*

Stu


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## MrBaz (Jun 9, 2007)

I have an idea that would make that flashlight even more awesome.

All that is needed is a single 365nm LED (doesn't even have to be very powerful).

The UV produced by the 365nm LED will cause the reaction of Tritium to He-3 to occur much more frequently, with more intensity. This means that you will get more intense photons being emitted from the tritium sphere. Rayleigh scattering shows us that increasing the number of incident photons does NOT increase the intensity of the light produced. However, increasing the frequency of the incident photons WILL yield a higher intensity photon being emitted.
Now, using more 365nm LED's will obviously yield more photons being released as well. Rayleigh scattering explains why you would want to use a 365nm LED vs a 380nm or even a much lower frequency 395nm LED.

This would give you a really cool flashlight that barely consumes any power.

Oh, btw....this will obviously shorten the life of the tritium sphere by quite a bit. I would guess half.


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## Walt175 (Jun 9, 2007)

Nice to see it finished! :goodjob:

Don't forget to bring it to PF9! :twothumbs


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## tvodrd (Jun 9, 2007)

:thumbsup: I'm trying two of those spheres for my bedroom nightlight tonight.

Larry


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## greg_in_canada (Jun 9, 2007)

I don't think there are any ways to speed up nuclear decay (excluding using an accelerator to smash atoms together). The UV probably just makes the phosphor glow brighter but isn't doing anything to the tritium so the half-life will be unaffected.

Very cool project by the way. I want one even though I have no real need or use for one 

Greg



MrBaz said:


> The UV produced by the 365nm LED will cause the reaction of Tritium to He-3 to occur much more frequently, with more intensity. This means that you will get more intense photons being emitted from the tritium sphere. Rayleigh scattering shows us that increasing the number of incident photons does NOT increase the intensity of the light produced. However, increasing the frequency of the incident photons WILL yield a higher intensity photon being emitted.
> Now, using more 365nm LED's will obviously yield more photons being released as well. Rayleigh scattering explains why you would want to use a 365nm LED vs a 380nm or even a much lower frequency 395nm LED.
> 
> This would give you a really cool flashlight that barely consumes any power.
> ...


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## [email protected] (Jun 9, 2007)

Yup, no easy way to speed up the decay thankfully... :sweat:

I agree with Greg, the UV led exites the phosphor wich in turn emits more photons.


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## MrBaz (Jun 9, 2007)

greg_in_canada said:


> I don't think there are any ways to speed up nuclear decay (excluding using an accelerator to smash atoms together). The UV probably just makes the phosphor glow brighter but isn't doing anything to the tritium so the half-life will be unaffected.
> 
> Very cool project by the way. I want one even though I have no real need or use for one
> 
> Greg



You're right, I don't know what I was thinking.


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## Radio (Jun 9, 2007)

tvodrd said:


> :thumbsup: I'm trying two of those spheres for my bedroom nightlight tonight.
> 
> Larry



:mecry: I just got a "Visual" 

:tinfoil:


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## nein166 (Jun 9, 2007)

As to UV enhanced output I tried it with one of those small freebie uv lights from Lighthound and I get a lot more light. And I was thinking about adding a UV LED in the tailcap to switch on by turning it out. Time will tell as I'm already onto another project.


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## nein166 (Jun 9, 2007)

[email protected] said:


> Good job! It might even have better "throw" than a regular tritium torch... :thumbsup:


Does the torch have an optic?
After being in the dark for 20minutes I can see very well by the glow.
At 10' it lights up a 4' area, at 1 foot I can read a newspaper easily.


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## [email protected] (Jun 9, 2007)

Yes, it has a lens, but no reflector.


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## Avatar28 (Jun 12, 2007)

carbine15 said:


> I wonder if batteries & LED's can do 12 years to 50% output (comparative brightness) in a host of that size. I bet it's possible.



I don't know. But I wonder how much runtime you would get from a 6D mag regulated to drive a single white 5mm LED. Hmm. A single D cell alkaline is around, what, we'll call it 20,000 mAh for easy math. Now I'm not sure on the math of exactly how the regulation works but I've got a vague idea. We'd have 9 volts but we only need around, what, 40% of that to drive the LED at 3.6v. There's some inefficiency in the circuitry so we'll just call it half. So I figure we would be drawing about 10 mA from each cell. So, um, what about 2000 hours, 83 days continous? Not exactly 10 years but not totally shabby either.  And that would have a LOT more light output. If you cut the output back to something a lot dimmer, well, maybe you COULD get a few years out of it. LOL.

Nein, I have to admit, that is a pretty cool mod. I always wanted one of those Traser things myself. Stupid NRC. *grumble*


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## greenlight (Jun 12, 2007)

but what to do with it?


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## nein166 (Jun 12, 2007)

Avatar28 said:


> I don't know. But I wonder how much runtime you would get from a 6D mag regulated to drive a single white 5mm LED. Hmm. A single D cell alkaline is around, what, we'll call it 20,000 mAh for easy math. Now I'm not sure on the math of exactly how the regulation works but I've got a vague idea. We'd have 9 volts but we only need around, what, 40% of that to drive the LED at 3.6v. There's some inefficiency in the circuitry so we'll just call it half. So I figure we would be drawing about 10 mA from each cell. So, um, what about 2000 hours, 83 days continous? Not exactly 10 years but not totally shabby either.  And that would have a LOT more light output. If you cut the output back to something a lot dimmer, well, maybe you COULD get a few years out of it. LOL.
> 
> Nein, I have to admit, that is a pretty cool mod. I always wanted one of those Traser things myself. Stupid NRC. *grumble*


 
Hmm, put a split ring on the tailcap and you would never loose your keys 
Thats the only place I see those single 5mm's these days, Photon Key Chains


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## carbine15 (Jun 12, 2007)

Avatar28 said:


> I don't know. But I wonder how much runtime you would get from a 6D mag regulated to drive a single white 5mm LED. Hmm. A single D cell alkaline is around, what, we'll call it 20,000 mAh for easy math. Now I'm not sure on the math of exactly how the regulation works but I've got a vague idea. We'd have 9 volts but we only need around, what, 40% of that to drive the LED at 3.6v. There's some inefficiency in the circuitry so we'll just call it half. So I figure we would be drawing about 10 mA from each cell. So, um, what about 2000 hours, 83 days continous? Not exactly 10 years but not totally shabby either.  And that would have a LOT more light output. If you cut the output back to something a lot dimmer, well, maybe you COULD get a few years out of it. LOL.
> 
> Nein, I have to admit, that is a pretty cool mod. I always wanted one of those Traser things myself. Stupid NRC. *grumble*



My Safe(Pal) light has been running constantly on a single 9 volt source for months now. Rumors have it that it can run for over a year (in find me mode) on one battery. Find me mode is all the light I need with dark adapted eyes to get up and navigate. What's the difference between a 6 AAAA batteries capacity (in a 9 volt Duracell) and 6 D batteries? I'd imagine the capacities being what they are would drive the light for 5 years at least. The math probably says more like 20 years.


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## stovetop25 (Jun 12, 2007)

Very cool!


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## bombelman (Jun 13, 2007)




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## nein166 (Jun 13, 2007)

Thank you all for your words of encouragement, anyone have a Gieger Counter *!?**!?*


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## CeilingDweller (Jun 14, 2007)

Man I want to play with some of that. I love it!


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## Led_Blind (Jun 14, 2007)

Nice one Nein,
i had the same idea but with a reflector from an old battered lantern torch. The trit is on a 1cm post v's sitting on the reflector in the mag head. 

As a comparison, the lantern reflector has almost 2x the throw  Dont laugh but this trit ball in reflector now illuminates the porcelain bus for late night driving.


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## nein166 (Jun 15, 2007)

Led_Blind said:


> Nice one Nein,
> i had the same idea but with a reflector from an old battered lantern torch. The trit is on a 1cm post v's sitting on the reflector in the mag head.
> 
> As a comparison, the lantern reflector has almost 2x the throw  Dont laugh but this trit ball in reflector now illuminates the porcelain bus for late night driving.


 
hee hee hee thats cool and a good application.


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## Ken_McE (Jun 16, 2007)

greg_in_canada said:


> The UV probably just makes the phosphor glow brighter but isn't doing anything to the tritium so the half-life will be unaffected.



The Tritium will be unaffected, but the phosphors will be driven harder, and they should also have some kind of half life. Given the massive run time of the unit, and the relatively tiny amount of time you'd be "overdriving" it with the UV LED, I think it'd be well worth it.


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## greg_in_canada (Jun 17, 2007)

That's a good point. My brother has a Texas Instruments digital watch with tritium backlight from the late 70's. I asked him about it recently and he mentioned that it works but is too dim to use now. 

It was pretty bright when new so I was surprised to hear it is very dim now (not that many half-lives have passed). So perhaps the phosphor has worn out and gotten weaker over time too.

So shining a lot of UV on the tritium might use up the "half-life" of the phosphor making the bulb get dim faster than you expect.

Greg




Ken_McE said:


> The Tritium will be unaffected, but the phosphors will be driven harder, and they should also have some kind of half life. Given the massive run time of the unit, and the relatively tiny amount of time you'd be "overdriving" it with the UV LED, I think it'd be well worth it.


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## strideredc (Jun 18, 2007)

Tritium said:


> Not quite the shortest. I have a tritium powered light made from a AAA minimag head and tail cap assembly.
> 
> Thurmond


 
i would love to see some pics of it


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## milkyspit (Jun 18, 2007)

Nein, I remember you working on that one. Kudos my friend! Talk about outside the box thinking!

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:


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## COMMANDR (Jun 18, 2007)

Just found this thread and thought I would share what I have done with some trit. spheres. I have modded some mimimag lights to accept a 11mm green and blue trit sphere. The maglights are cut down to a single AA lenght and are used as a spare battery carrier as well a a tritium powered light source. I will try to post some pics tonight. 

Gary


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## nein166 (Jun 18, 2007)

COMMANDR said:


> Just found this thread and thought I would share what I have done with some trit. spheres. I have modded some mimimag lights to accept a 11mm green and blue trit sphere. The maglights are cut down to a single AA lenght and are used as a spare battery carrier as well a a tritium powered light source. I will try to post some pics tonight.
> 
> Gary


 
Thats a sweet idea, I haven't gotten around to adding a UV but I will someday.


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## Bushman5 (Sep 10, 2007)

this is incredible!!! i've never even thought of using tritium for a light source!!

you just gave me so many ideas! 

:twothumbs


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## DonShock (Sep 10, 2007)

Bart just started a Group Buy for more trit spheres.


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## Illum (Sep 12, 2007)

[email protected] said:


> Yup, no easy way to speed up the decay thankfully... :sweat:
> 
> I agree with Greg, the UV led exites the phosphor wich in turn emits more photons.



a tritium powered flashlight that has a momentarily on/off switch marked "*turbo*" for those emergencies
I like that Idea


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## Burgess (Jan 2, 2010)

What a Cool Thread ! ! !







to Nein166 --


You certainly deserve an AttaBoy for yer' Imagination and Creativity !


:wow::goodjob::kewlpics::thanks:
_


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## nein166 (Jan 2, 2010)

Burgess said:


> What a Cool Thread ! ! !
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thanks 

I currently have the light turned off, by that I mean its bezel down on the desk.


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