LED Mag-Lite conversion

Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. And he has a new best-of writing collection and “lazy man’s memoir,” called Borg Like Me.

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November 28th, 2007 2

How to turn a Mag-Lite flashlight into a high-powered LED flashlight.

High-powered LED Mag-lite Conversion – Link

2 thoughts on “LED Mag-Lite conversion”

dansdata says:

November 28th, 2007 at 10:22 pm

Well, not that high powered. It’s an array of 10mm LEDs, which have the same junctions in them as 5mm LEDs, but a bigger lens (and usually a tighter beam).

This array is cheap and doesn’t need special cooling, but it’s good for only about one watt of output. That means that, with modern LEDs, it probably appears significantly brighter than a two-watt incandescent bulb, at the price of no longer having an adjustable beam.

Many LED flashlight makers have come up with retrofits and/or hacks of the big Mag-Lites. The biggest one I’ve ever checked out was the Elektro Lumens Tesla-6:
http://www.dansdata.com/tesla6.htm
(21.6 rated watts!)

The most powerful commercial product I’ve checked out (a couple of years ago, now) was a Terralux lamp:
http://www.dansdata.com/da5w.htm