Teardown of a vintage Lucido 20 year old LED torch.
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- Опубликовано: 11 ноя 2020
- By modern standards this very old torch (flashlight) looks a bit dull. But when you realise it was possibly the FIRST of the LED lights of this style, then it's a lot more interesting.
I bought this over two decades ago when Nichia had just launched the first commercial white LEDs in 1996 and an adventurous company used ten of them in this light.
It was hard to get hold of the new white LEDs, and in the electronic distributors they cost £10 each! It follows that this torch was VERY expensive. I can't remember how much, but it took a lot of self-convincing to actually buy one. It was bought via an advert in an electronics magazine, and at the same time I bought one of the first, and equally radical white LED keyring flashlights. (A Laughing Rabbit Photon micro light.)
My justification for buying it was to give it as a gift to my parents who lived in a rural area on the Isle of Man, where the storms often cause blackouts by damaging overhead lines.
When it arrived I very cautiously took it to bits with the same apprehension of opening a brand new phone these days. I probed the silicone potting just enough to see one of the resistors, and then put it back together again.
The main circuit board is just a star of ten eighth Watt 12 ohm resistors going to each of the ten precious Nichia LEDs. I'm guessing that part of the reason the LEDs are spaced off the PCB is to make space for the resistors underneath as well as avoiding the stresses of mounting an LED hard against a PCB. The silicone potting is very tough - like glazing sealant, so I stopped trying to remove it as the risk of damaging the PCB was too high.
One of the main marketing features of this torch was that it would run continuously for a month on a set of batteries. When all the previous torches had been tungsten and started going dull and orange before blacking out completely in the region of an hour or so, that was a radical thing.
A few years later I also bought my first white LED head torch (a Petzl Tikka) in 2001 after a very annoying shift at Disney Paris, working on a control panel in a very inaccessible area while an old tungsten head torch dwindled away to a dull orange glow. One of the riggers I was working alongside loaned me his Petzl Tikka, and I was so impressed that on my first visit back home I bought one from a sports store. It was a revelation. Much better to work with and massive run time, even with just three AAA cells.
These days it would be odd to buy a torch or flashlight with anything other than an LED source.
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I was thinking like "wow! 20 years old! I can't believe there was an LED flashlight in the 80's!"
Then it hit me.
Feels bad man :(
20 years ago was the 80's? sure you done your math correct there bud?
@@Random_4400I guess it didn't hit you
I know, it's even worse for me.. I'm stuck in the 90's, lol.
Me: "wow! 20 years ago... I didn't know they had led flashlights in the '80s"
Also me: *does the math* 😶
My first LED flashlight was from the very late 90s. If I recall correctly it was only a single white LED (so not nearly as costly as the Lucida with its 10 LEDs), so not especially bright but it could run for 100 hours off a set of four AA alkaline cells and was at least a useful amount of light since it was fairly well focused. I also have some 18 year old battery powered nightlights that I still use whenever I travel since my sense of balance is entirely visual (making nighttime power outages especially dangerous in unfamiliar spaces...and I am a night owl) and they use a pair of low power white LEDs and run for about 100 hours on high or 200 hours on low from four AA alkaline cells. Newer LEDs would be more efficient still, but 100-200 hours runtime for something that is only used a few times each year for a few weeks in total has made it not worth the effort to modernize them with modern white LEDs.
Same thought process here...
I like how Y2K is now considered vintage, what would that make me being born in the 70's? ancient?
@@jb0nd38372 Sigh. I'm the "old man" at work... born in the 60s...
Like that funny feeling when it sinks in that you have worked for longer than the apprentices have been alive.
My god, describing things from the 2000’s as vintage makes me old as f**k. I remember playing with my dads tools back in the early 80’s and thinking they were old and they were from the 60’s
Same here, back in the 80's, 20 year old things seemed really old, nowadays I'm still using & wearing 20 year old items & they still seem quite new!
Think of playing with your dad's tools back in the 60s that were even older.
I remember when my dad got a led bulb for his maglite. It was like the most expensive, cutting edge and hightech thing we bought for years. His friends came over just to see it! So funny 20 yeas later....
I have a 6 D cell maglite, still using the special incandesent bulb. If it ever fails I'll try the led, if I can find one for it.
@@johnnyreb3487 I bought a some LED upgrade kits for the maglite a few years ago from niteize.com
I like my Fenix TK-22 V2 at 1600 Lumens and 41K CD
Maglite 6D with LED conversion master race!
@@WasmachinemanAren't the replacement bulbs for the Maglight only 3W? They are much brighter than the original bulb, but the output is sad compared to all these new $10-20 flashlights with 600 lumen output.
Great piece of LED history there Clive. It’s amazing how far this technology has come in twenty years. Nowadays, some of them are so bright they have internal cooling fans.
I remember when the first Photon LED micro lights came out when I was in elementary school and how amazing we thought it was for such a tiny light to be so bright on a watch battery even if they only came in red, green, and amber...
Not looking forward to the day when you reach for a flashlight but it doesn't work because it's n the middle of a firmware update.
The little light I used to look into the other one has a ridiculous processor in it for a keychain light.
@@bigclivedotcom sounds like a plan for one of your next videos, no?
Who knew that your dad would fit right in nowadays with the geniuses on the internet. He was just ahead of his time!
I love the construction. It's longevity is a testament to its engineering
I’d assign it more to being overbuilt than calling it engineered. Being so early on in the history of LEDs, the designers probably just wanted to make sure it survived a typical lifecycle for common flashlights so it would be seen as a proper replacement to incandescent
As someone that builds flashlights for a hobby this thing is pretty rubbish even compared to any basic cheap convoy branded flashlight. I guess people don't really know what's available nowdays
Uh it has cracked plastic, sticky disintegrating rubber, and extremely dim LEDs... so what is so great about the construction because the longevity claim is a lie.
For its price they could have been made it of aluminium, then it could still be intact.
@@illustriouschin Yes, plastic was a bad choice for such an expensive light. Although you shouldn't complain about the dim LEDs, because they were the first generation of mass produced white LEDs, there was no better available.
I have a 3-D-cell MagLite I bought in 1989, when those were high-end incandescent lights. I upgraded it to an LED (the MagLite drop-in) sometime in the early 2000s. It was the brightest light I had at the time.
My Thrunite stuff will handily outshine it, though the Archer takes full power to do so. I suspect my TN12 will outshine this mid-power, but the MagLite has one advantage over my modern lights: loads of capacity! 10Ah vs 2.6Ah for the TN12. The Thrunite stuff makes up for that by being variable brightness; the MagLite is either on or off.
Whoa, a treasured heirloom...
Insert: Woah! This is worthless! meme
Thanks for the good torch video,interesting to remember gadgets and useful things from the last 20 years and more
It’s shocking to think about that 2000 was two decades ago already.
And that a flashlight from the year 2000 is an antique.
Well, can't argue with the maths.
The year 2000. The future.
where did that time go
@@victoriaevelyn3953 Into the past :(
I absolutely love finding things built with integrity like this. Made to last, obviously.
I hope you put it back together, for what it is, for the future.
Good video!
I did. There is the temptation to make a new LED module from scratch.
Omg I had one of those! Loved it when I used to do some shrooms and we would hit the creek to swim at night with a waterproof light I was so amazed! Haha
its amazing how the leds have improved so much
It would be interesting to compare well used ones to some new old stock vintage leds to see how much they have lost brightness
My guess is they likely have not deteriorated much as such vintage LEDs are usually run at much lower power so the phosphors have been both much less stimulated and have remained much cooler as well. That said, any comparison would really need to be conducted within the same manufacturing run as there tended to be much more natural variation, both in color temperature and intensity at a given current, between batches of white LEDs back in the latter 90s.
The "Should I buy?"
Like the 6xD cell Police issue Maglight I have.
Strong enough you can drive over it, and could double up as a nightstick....
Still works and looks good.
As long as you don’t mind constantly twisting the battery cap when it flickers and loses connection.
I thought the same when I got a 5xD cell Maglight, it was pricey at the time and thinking like with all my 2 D cell lights I bought 5 2 packs of no name D batteries.....7 years later I decided it was STARTING to look a bit yellow in the beam so I got out the remaining spares, and then 4 years later I upgraded it with a LED replacement bulb, That was 2 years ago now Still going strong with that second set of batteries! Only change now it has a vintage belt clip for full nightstick style carry. Never had a problem with the endcap threads, just gotta keep them lubed.
None of my other flashlights require periodic lubrication.
And in a pinch, you are always prepared for a nighttime game of baseball...just don’t forget the mitts!
My one criticism of the Maglights of that era was the lack of any vibration isolation of the incandescent bulbs...so whenever dropped from a 10ft (3m) ladder onto a concrete floor while lit you *always* had to break out the spare bulb in the battery cap...and that was fir the 2 and 3 D-cell versions, I would expect it to possibly be even worse with the added weight of 5 D cells. Otherwise I very much loved their flashlights of that era and still have several of them in working order (there were others, but they didn’t survive the leaking of their batteries!).
remember those, the bulb would break the 1st thing you would hit hard with it.. but were still great lights..
I gave my dad a vintage bottle of Whisky... ... I opened it before I gave it to him, decanted it, filled it with Bells - his favourite - before I gave it to him. His comment - It was nice, but not as good as Bells!
That's the placebo effect right there! The same affliction that audiophiles suffer from LoL. It's not going to taste right if it doesn't look right LoL.
He didn't notice that the seal was broken?
@@illustriouschin Not when presented with a tray and 2 glasses already poured - my dad didn't do giftwrapped!
Glad to see I'm not the only one who jams a torch in his gob when fixing stuff !! :)
You should replace them with modern super bright LEDs and then compare it again or show a before and after.
The plastic had perished.
I agree! Also replace the batteries with a lithium cell & charge controller would be cool.
@@paulcresswell6268 he has a 3d printer though. He has the technology. :D
Nichia NSPW510HS-K1 is the way to go
@@stranger7968 at that point he's just making a new flashlight
I remember when they first came out and the words super bright actually were amazing, they just blew you away with just how much brighter than the ordinary white leds. A real journey back through memory lane, thanks for that BC.
And how people felt the need to point them at other people's eyes to show just how bright they were.
@@bigclivedotcom Ahhhh my eyes, yes that was the fun times, until of course they were your eyes LOL.
I remember buying my first ever led torch i was on holiday in Wales when I was about 8 years old id always loves things like that and I went into a corner shop and saw this small pocket torch and the amount of light that it put out was amazing for its time and it was really cheap like £30 I begged and cried to my parents for them to buy me it and eventually they gave in I was the happiest boy ever
Another legendary big Clive show. I know nothing about electronics but your channel has me fascinated. It would cool if you could do a introduction to electronics for all the non-electronic savvy people that watch your channel.
When rubber grip goes sticky, rub it with ammonia for a bit, good as new! (don't use a fuzzy cloth cause the fuzz will get stuck)
I will try. I guess it takes the stuff that bleeds out away from the surface.
I was expecting you to upgrade it to modern LEDs and give it back to your dad! Neat teardown anyway though! Thanks for sharing.
I remember my first LED flashlight had a 1W Luxeon Star when they were brand new, that flashlight cost $100 CAD back in the day.
Dude my headtorch cost 500$ when I bought it many years ago. Crazy how things evolve.
Dammit, dropped my barely-larger-than-a-cr123a-battery work flashlight down a drain. There goes another $65.
Probably 20lm. Now you can get 200 for same watts.
@@mgancarzjr It was the size of a normal flashlight at the time, maybe a little smaller. It also had a neato dark grey anodized aluminum case.
Wow... now I feel old realizing this light was bought when I was a small child.
Awesome to see an artifact from days gone by. The fact it still works fine 30 years later says that yes, you indeed get what you pay for.
20 years. Blue and white LEDs didn't exist 30 years ago.
@@bigclivedotcom Ah, my mistake. Also easy to lose track of time as one gets older.
@@bigclivedotcom The first commercially available blue LED was apparently introduced in ’89, so technically, there were blue LEDs 30yrs ago...
But the ones with really usable efficiency/brightness were introduced around 93, with the first patents dating to 91 or so.
Phosphor-based white LEDs were a couple of years behind, IIRC.
@@tilmanahr If I know my history right, RCA had the very first blue LED back in the 70's but it was very dim and the process of making them was so unreliable that they only ever had one working. RCA ended up cutting the budget and that project got canned.
@@RingingResonance There were some experimental ones pretty early on, but the ones Cree introduced in 88/89 were the first commercially viable ones, as far as I know.
Still too low-powered for most “real world”-applications, though.
Must have been around 20 year ago I followed Clive's instructions to convert my normal flash light to led. The brightest leds back then were the red ones.
i love how he talked louder each time the light got brighter as if the blinding light made it so we cant hear
Oh man this bought back so many memories... I have many old torches like that. These days I only have 2, an Olight baton pro, and a Maglight ML300. The maglight runs on D cells and even though the olight is easy enough to charge and more convenient so it gets the most use I keep a box of d cells around and the maglight just incase and as a secondary torch.
I still have an original white LED I bought from Orvacs Electronics in California when they first hit the market. I remember how excited one of the sales staff was about them. We talked for about an hour about them, I spent my meager allowance on a blue and a white LED.. Compared to anything at the time, they were just stunning. Its cool to see how far we've come in such a blunt demonstration.
Perhaps you can explore all the flavors of blue LEDs that have existed. I know some might be difficult to acquire, but the various hues are worth seeing together.
Crazy that something from 2000 is considered vintage now
That's a cruel thing to say. I'm from the 80's * cry *
@@connardman Wow, a real life antique on the internet!
@@Fuogor Sounds expensive... I should sold myself.
i have a fairly old LED torch, very high quality, very bright. The only reason that i don't use it is that it eats batteries. if you want it to disect i am happy to send it to you.
Think about buying rechargeable batteries for it.
Probably better to get a modern one
Ahhh, this show really brings sadness into my heart as I realize I also have been hanging onto some old D cell LED far too long. Sad to see them go. Sad
@@davidgriffiths6748 like i said, it eats batteries. it does not care if they are rechargable or not, 5 minutes and they are flat.
@@SparkY0 wow, why did i not think of that, wait, i did think of that.
It kinda reminds me of my old maglite led flashlight. I was able to upgrade it (using an aftermarket kit) and it's super bright now, and uses 3 d-cells. I think it was pretty expensive new, but it was made in the USA and I can still get parts for it.
One of my old Ever Ready torches is made of rubber with a steel core, the strange thing is my red rubber one is cracked an dried out an brittle but my black rubber one is ok, different rubber types, maybe. Petroleum jelly is also bad for rubber an superglue eats certain plastics like celluloid producing a bit of heat due to the reaction which is exothermic. Love this video as often wondered what was inside the first led torch, my collection mostly comprises of the old bulb type but you can get led conversions to upgrade but I keep mine original, I even copy the original battery labels to stick on modern batteries, I have also rebuilt old dry radio batteries for portable valve radios. I also like the old battery fluorescent battery lights, you can get led tubes for these which are much brighter an last longer to. That torch of yours will be worth something in a few more years.
Thanks for this sacrifice!
I had to show my wife this video because you said the word swithered at the start and I have always accused her of making this word up. Lol
Married to a Scot for >15 years.... swear she still makes words up and tells me they're "Good Scottish word(s)".
6 years ago I bought a flashlight that was top of the line at the local Canadian Tire, it took 6 AAs, 3x2 in parallel, it's absolutely beefy, solid thick alminum shell, basically a baton. 600 lumens, it's my favourite, but recently I've been seeing 100-120 lumen single AA flashlights, which also has a small circuit board to probably increase voltage and squeeze most of the juice from the battery. I love flashlights.
More vintage LED stuff please!
Oh! I had the same, got it as a 15yo - combined birthday and Christmas present since it was so
Expensive. But I wanted it, haha. It got stolen on a camping trip some years later. But I still remember that it was, at least compared to usual incandescent flashlights, extremely bright and the battery life was fantastic.
I still have the first maglite LED conversion bulb that I bought at that time. Single packaged 3W Luxeon LED chip that's integrated into a module thats the same size as the tungsten bulb, and I remember how amazed I was with how bright just one LED could be, and its still quite bright by todays standards, even after probably close to 1000 hours or more of use. Cost was also astronomical, too. Something like 40 USD when it came out, but I had to have it.
Wait, you didn't swap the LEDs for some of them from that big bag you brought on screen?
Chewing through all that silicone potting would be a pain in the arse. And after all that, he'd have to change the resistors, too. For a flashlight that's cracked down the middle and has a sticky handle?
@@sandordugalin8951 yes
@@sandordugalin8951 You're acting like a crack and a sticky handle is the end of the world.
”When I bought it I opened it before givig it to my parents as a gift”. How familiar that sounds to me. I open everything to be sure it is OK. Well the real reason is of course curiosity.
nice i have many torches but my fave still is my old Ever ready 6V lantern torch i saved
I don't watch television anymore, maybe I should ditch the licence.
Give the money to people who deserve it, like Clive.
Who says music hall is dead, people are happy to pay for entertainment.
If you don't watch TV, why are you paying the license? That is stupid. Totally legal to own a tv without license for use as a computer monitor, youtube, game consoles, etc.
A license to watch TV? What country charges you to watch TV? Bizarre concept to me, from the USA here.
@@mrbyamile6973 The UK - It funds the BBC, which is why it has no adverts.
It's about £160, which makes it just ridiculously poor value compared to Netflix.
@@_Piers_ Hah, in Germany you have to pay even if you dont own a TV and public channels are still full of ads.
2:30 ...silicon grease is the key here.
Silicone. Silicon is a bit too hard :-)
Love your videos. Can you please do a glitter lamp fluid tutorial video. Your process on how you make it.
Varta batteries the bane of vintage computer guys existence
I did a similar thing for my Nan, she had an energiser torch which would eat batteries so I got an everled drop in led for it. She thought it was brilliant how long the batteries would last after that! After she passed away a few years ago I kept it as a reminder of her, at the time it seemed super bright but these days it pales in comparison to my keychain light lol
When you switched it on, I was half expecting to see it was red! Surely you just HAVE to replace those old LEDs with their modern equivalents and see how much better it is. It would be interesting to take a light meter reading before and after.
I used to have two of that exact flashlight. As a commercial pilot, the US FAA had a requirement that we have "a two, D-cell, hand flashlight" in the cockpit. I carried one in my flight bag and was extremely pissed when both of them literally disintegrated (plastic and rubber bodies) and that I had payed $65.00 USD each of them, at a discount!
I've still got a 30 plus years old Maglite that still works as good as the day it was new, built to last.
Its aking to have new LEDs fitted to bring it up to date !
Thanks Clive.
I remember when they introduced the Mag-Lite LED mod bulb. it was a game changer for a light that effectively weight 8lbs but who was counting back then.
I remember seeing white leds for the first time. They were very expensive at the time, and not very efficient. I remember at the time thinking of the many uses, streetlights, fridge lights, TV backlighting, house lights, flood lights, now I feel robbed 😂
I still remember hacking my cheap mag light clone into a led flashlight as I got my hands on some engeneering samples of luxeon stars. That was a 1W rated led whitch I ran at about 0.6W as they had the tendency to die very quickly from over heating.
I made an LED chandelier in 1993 for a school project, and convinced a manufacturer to give me about 100 amber LEDs for it, since white LEDs were still nascent at the time. Wired in series, plugged directly into 120V . . . Don't hate me.
Kind of reminds me of my Grundig-branded LED torch (which is still operational, assuming I can remember where I put it!!!), I think I bought that about 12 years ago now and was impressed at how bright it was at the time, and even now on a new set of batteries it is still pretty bright... :)
I had one of these LED torches as well, it was a Lightwave 3000 or 4000. It was heavy enough to be used as a baton.
i have one of those old big "million candle power" lanterns that had a halogen bulb and lead acid battery in a seperate satchel you would carry, conected by a curly cord. it now has a 24v 75w HID lamp and ballast from a truck and a 6s5p 18650 pack with an Ebike battery bms board. ridiculously bright, illuminates an entire field. i once lent it to a policeman looking for an elderly man with dementia who had wandered off and it didn't take long to find him, walking in a field without a care in the world..
I made a set of really wide flat-head screwdrivers from a set of spade drills by grinding the cutting edges off. The ones with the 1/4” hex shank fit in a bit driver handle.
I had one of those!! and it split at the same place.
I still remember the days when stuff was built to last. Until manufacturers figured out building cheap junk makes them more money.
Planned obsolescence. You can primarily blame GM for that
True that... just look around where all the junk ends.....
@@johnappel7174 It's more due to the change in consumer preferences, rather than planned obsolescence. I had this particular torch (it was called the Lightwave) and the thing was real weighty with the D cells inside, like a chunk of steel with a rubber exterior. Nowdays everyone's making small, lightweight torches out of aluminium and 18650 cells.
back when a TV cost so much that only the rich could afford it... yeah, great old times, full of safety and energy waste. those bad manufacturers and their greed, making stuff cheap so any one can afford it. its not like you could buy more expensive and longer lasting products today...
Like a DOS computer is useful now ? Windows 95? Vista?
No of course not, they are junk
Scissors??? I was expecting Big Clive to whip out a pin-spanner ;)
Yep, most LED torches up to the mid-2000s were indeed like this.
Remember getting a 100-LED one for christmas as a tween (Around 2006-2007). It looked like this: bit.ly/2Waya7R
Now they only sell UV ones as far as I've seen.
And a few years later (2009 I think) my dad got maybe not the first but at least one of the first affordable chinese high-power LED torches.
This one to be precise: bit.ly/3aaQ8PI (Not sold anymore unfortunately)
It ran on a single 18650 cell and unlike todays chinese torches didn't have all those flashing modes. One click on, one click off and that was it.
Fun fact at the time was that it was actually brighter than my large and bulky 100-LED torch (Which ran on 4 AA cells btw) while being much smaller.
And he did offer one to me aswell that I still have up to this day. (Unlike the 100-LED one)
Another fun fact: While I was on a primary school trip to the mountains to go skiing (idk the exact name of this in english) We did play and pillow fight in the bedrooms at night using a flashlight and it was indeed a incandescent one !
This is only to prove that I do indeed remember this era where almost all of the flashlights used by pretty much everyone were incandescent and definitely not LED.
But times have changed, i know that too.
Now flashlights do get much brighter and run for a longer time, while using rechargeable li-ion cells instead of alkaline batteries that run out quickly.
Grettings from wonderful France 🇫🇷 , one of the most stringent EU countries regarding quarantine...
FYI, isopropyl alcohol dissolves silicone potting/sealant but doesn't (normally) harm components, not sure what it would do to the old plastic and rubber though.
I remember spending C$200 on my first cree 1watt led flashlight some time between 2000-2006, I forget exactly when. It was a big deal, same time I bought a 2GB usb stick, the biggest ever when it was fresh hot off the presses.
Compare this one to an Emisar D4V2 which is the size of two C batteries, uses one 18650 and lights up at 4000 lumen with four CREE XPL-Hi V3 LEDs. All that for just $55 for the light w/o battery. I wonder what kind of lighting technology we will have in 20 years.
Built somewhat like my 36 year old Durabeam torch, which must about have been one of the last scientifically designed tungsten torches. Much the same hard plastic shell and 'softer' plastic sealing ring, and multifaceted reflector.
I do have a few old LED torches (15 to 18 years old), but they're mostly "also brands", multiple LEDs with three aaa cells in a cage. I have a single LED MagLite (a proper copper's torch) hich uses to "D" cells, and can light up a barn, half a mile away, then there is the Cheapy multi LED effort of a few years earlier, every bit as big, and struggles to light up a cat across the yard. About a month ago I bought a more modern "NEBO" branded penlight "Inspector" torch, not expecting it to be all that fantastic - I was more than pleasantly surprised by its single LED. I've discarded the packaging unfortunately, so can't say what it boasts, but it is quite literally a glowing testament to how much LEDs have advanced over the years.
20 year old huh, so that's about 198... wait... oh god its already 20 years since 2000
I remember when we bought the first GX5.3 LED-replacements for the Halogen lamps in our bathroom... they consisted of just about 30 of these low-power LEDs pottet into a tradional glass lamp base, and they sucked so bad... abismal light output and the colour was also disgusting (they claimed it could replace a 25W tungsten lamp at the time... more like a 5W tungsten lamp, if at all. Basically a glorified night light).
But hey - it was like "future technology" at the time. Took many more years until we finally could get decent ones that were able to really "replace" a halogen lamp.
I later took one of these and (as they ran on 12V DC) built my own LED flashlight with it by glueing it in to the front of an old tungsten Flashlight that held 8 AA batteries - fot that application it was not too bad (until decent LED flashlights became cheap enough).
I HAD ONE OF THOSE!
I just replaced it a few months ago because the screw section cracked and it wouldn’t stay together. I got it around 2003.
I'd like to see you changing the leds with new ones and reassembling the torch, and maybe fixing the broken thread... I also would like to suggest putting integrated 18350s with a small bms, but it would lose the thread feature
I made an LED flashlight out of those jumbo red's in the early 90s.. it stunk, but it was a lot more efficient than incans! But I had some pretty decent LED's in the early 2000's, early cree stars, but the "shower head" lights were still popular at the time (still are, apparently!)
I would probably change the resistor value and feed the LEDs a bit more current to get them brighter, it's never going to be an XHP160 and have the ability to turn night into day but at least it should be able to put out a little more light.. so long as the led assembly doesn't get to hot for the plastic. I have an old tungsten type three D cell torch, it's an ACME brand copy of another famous brand for which I can't remember the name at this moment but was all the rage back in the 90'S, oh wow I just remembered, it was MAGLIGHT!
Anyway I ended up getting a drop in led in a bulb for it and while the batteries lasted even longer, it wasn't as bright as the original tungsten filament light globe..
This video has inspired me to go and have a look on eBay and see if there's been any progress with drop in led type replacements! The torch body is aluminium and glass while everything is sealed with O rings, you twist the head to turn it on and focus the beam! While the MAGLIGHT cost 10 time's as much but had a push button instead... Anyway I'm of to eBay, cheerio!
We still use a lot of tungsten flashlights in my house, we have some LED ones too, but we never got rid of the tungsten ones. In fact, in order to see colors well, my main carry flashlight (my Nitecore Tube is a backup) is one of the last SureFire 6P originals bought around when they were discontinued in 2016.
The first commercially available red led's were north of $350.00 each when they were first introduced, somewhere around 1966 or 67. I believe they were produced by Fairchild. We certainly have come a very long way.
My Pawpaw bought one of the first brand new solid state Fisher 16-channel stereos made...had 2 huge drivers that weighed around 12.5Kg (27.5lbs) each.
When it finally died he gave it to me and said: If you can fix it...you can have it.
Well...my other Grandpa had been teaching me math, electronics & electrical work since I was 6 so I said OKAY!
14 days later after having to diagnose then design & fabricate 2 new circuit boards including populating them...pretty much lived in Radio Shack the whole time...I asked him over.
I had it hooked up to 16 JBL Signature Series Concert Line speakers...I put in a Black Sabbath tape and cranked Iron Man at full volume!
When he got his hearing back he said: Its yours...you have damn well earned it. Seems his repair guy said it was unrecoverable...but he never met me or my Grandpa
I had came up on the cusp of the crossover from tube to solid state so I knew a bit about both worlds. And it was only the second board etch I'd ever done.
The Comodore 1541 floppy drive has a fairly noisy stepper motor. That improves drastically with a bit of vaseline on the rails the head assembly is sliding on. Now nearly 40 years later that plastic still hasn't degraded. So vaseline isn't bad for all plastics!
Too funny! I still have some of mine!
Still have a 30yr old 6Dcell Mag. I Have Led lights, but Sometimes a regular bulb just Looks better
I had the aa version of that when they first came out , it replaced my AA mini mag light I had at the time . The mag light ate batteries and bulbs for breakfast . The mag light batteries would last about 2 hours , and the bulb around 4 hours . The lucido didn’t need bulbs and the batteries lasted an insane length of time . I once accidentally left it on for two weeks and the batteries were still fine. The lucido was a fantastic torch , but I eventually lost it , but the torch on my new rubber Nokia phone replaced it
i still have my 1st gen LED light from sears, 5 leds, the newer model has a 1 watt? 3 watt? center led that is a traditional bulb insert but mine is so old it has the same 8mm led as the 4 around it, takes 4 AAs and still works despite half of the plastic broken off
and now the state of the art with LEDs are those Cree XHP 2 series emitters,the XHP70.2 emits over 4000 lumens, and I wouldn't be suprised if it is as intense as the sun, I have bee able to melt and smoke things with the focused beam!
I still have my old Lucido Lightwave in a drawer somewhere.
i remember paying $40 for an led flashlight with a single blue led in it. i can't find anything on it but i think it was made by Emissive Energy. my dad bought one right when they came out. i remember it being a big deal.
That flashlight is older than me, lol!
You should do a video on replacing the leds
he's holding that flashlight like he's about to bash the bishop
Built like my sister's LED solar yard lanterns from that same time period. Die cast aluminum with a light detector as well as a solar cell. The solar cells on phenolic faded away and the clear potting cracked. The LEDS were the old dimmer blueish that had odd greenish specular notes as these aged. I replaced the solar cells with a durable glass type with attached charger/driver board, cleaned and polished the non-yellowed good plastic decorative panes and replaced the LEDS with a brighter, warmer type. You cannot do that to the modern foil stamped, metal/plastic framed trash it thingies.
My very first white led "flashlight" was a single white led, resistor, and 9v battery that my dad made me. I took it to class in 2nd grade (around 2000 - 2001) and a classmate stole it. Never found out who took it. :(
You should upgrade this flashlight with the modern high power white LEDs and it will shine on.
My first light with a white LED was a small clip on light. The battery was dead at the time.
Got a led bike light in 2004 think it was £25 very bluec white good for being seen rubbish to see with the warmer lights today are so much better.
yeah i remember years ago having an expensive flashlight that now couldn't compare to a little keychain size light as far as light output
Not a white LED, but I remember buying my first blue LED. It was from a surplus store and cost almost 10 bucks. That was probably in the mid 90's.
I think those dim white LEDs are what they still use in the flashlights you can get from Harbor Freight free with a coupon. And they’re worth that price.
If you want it I have an Ikea Tradfri wirelessly controlled bulb and controller that has obviously let out the magic smoke (the bulb has blackening on the plastic "bulb" and there is black visible from one of the vent holes at the bottom) and no longer works, could return it (it's less than 1yr old iirc) but what's the fun in that when it can be disassembled to see what has gone "pop".
My dad had one of these in the desert back in like 2001-2002 and it ran continuously for nearly his whole deployment of 10 weeks. I don't know how much it cost but I do remember him saying it was a worthwhile investment, especially compared with the awful enormous maglites which everyone else used. I remember using it as a kid, setting it down after I was done with it, then picking it back up a week later like "oh yeah, I forgot to turn it off last time I used it"
I have an incandescent bulb flash light that must be well over 20 years old from Otis elevators. It's OSHA approved for using in flammable gas conditions. Neat little switch to turn on. I'd like to upgrade it to led but don't know where to start lol
There were universal LED conversion kits back in the day, not sure if they're still easy to find.
Maplin used to take the Mickey with the price of components!! 😊❤️