Custom optics..
I emailed a company that makes lenses for LEDs about the possibility of
having a lens made to create a beam shape similar to that of a car low beam headlight. Here's the reply... quote Hi James, Thank you for your enquiry to POL. Yes, what you are asking for is quite possible, as we have carried out similar designs for head-lamps for sports and orienteering applications, with similar beam characteristics. However, the costs for these custom designed optics are very high, so you would have to be quite sure of your future volumes to justify it. Typically, the design exercise would be around £2-2.5K and take 3-4 weeks to complete. We would then need to make tooling to injection mould the parts - the lowest cost route would be to make inserts to suit one of our existing standard optic formats, which would cost around £5-6K. If a stand-alone single impression tool were required, this would be around £12-15K! The component prices will be batch dependant and will be, as follows (price each, ex works): 100…………….£3.75 1k………………£2.50 5k …………….£1.25 10K……………£0.95 20K…………..£0.50 I hope this helps. /quote So it's possible, but a little costly for a low volume application. There's likely a company in China that would do it for half the price! -- JS |
Custom optics..
On Monday, October 14, 2013 5:33:06 PM UTC-4, James wrote:
So it's possible, but a little costly for a low volume application. There's likely a company in China that would do it for half the price! Hmm. If we can get Bill Gates interested in biking at night, plus geeking out by building his own homebrew headlights, then the Gates foundation could step in... But it does illustrate that if the market were there (say, if the U.S. had some reasonable standards for bike headlights) that such things might be pretty easy to buy and not very expensive. How many round-beam LED bike headlights do you estimate are sold every year? Quite a few, I'm sure. - Frank Krygowski |
Custom optics..
On Monday, October 14, 2013 2:33:06 PM UTC-7, James wrote:
I emailed a company that makes lenses for LEDs about the possibility of having a lens made to create a beam shape similar to that of a car low beam headlight. Here's the reply... quote Hi James, Thank you for your enquiry to POL. Yes, what you are asking for is quite possible, as we have carried out similar designs for head-lamps for sports and orienteering applications, with similar beam characteristics. However, the costs for these custom designed optics are very high, so you would have to be quite sure of your future volumes to justify it. Typically, the design exercise would be around �2-2.5K and take 3-4 weeks to complete. We would then need to make tooling to injection mould the parts - the lowest cost route would be to make inserts to suit one of our existing standard optic formats, which would cost around �5-6K. If a stand-alone single impression tool were required, this would be around �12-15K! The component prices will be batch dependant and will be, as follows (price each, ex works): 100�����.�3.75 1k�������2.50 5k �����.�1.25 10K������0.95 20K����..�0.50 I hope this helps. /quote So it's possible, but a little costly for a low volume application. There's likely a company in China that would do it for half the price! I'm sure they'll be glad to take your money, but lenses alone won't do it. The whole collimator business is more complicated for LED's. |
Custom optics..
On 15/10/13 10:06, Dan O wrote:
On Monday, October 14, 2013 2:33:06 PM UTC-7, James wrote: I emailed a company that makes lenses for LEDs about the possibility of having a lens made to create a beam shape similar to that of a car low beam headlight. Here's the reply... quote Hi James, Thank you for your enquiry to POL. Yes, what you are asking for is quite possible, as we have carried out similar designs for head-lamps for sports and orienteering applications, with similar beam characteristics. However, the costs for these custom designed optics are very high, so you would have to be quite sure of your future volumes to justify it. Typically, the design exercise would be around �2-2.5K and take 3-4 weeks to complete. We would then need to make tooling to injection mould the parts - the lowest cost route would be to make inserts to suit one of our existing standard optic formats, which would cost around �5-6K. If a stand-alone single impression tool were required, this would be around �12-15K! The component prices will be batch dependant and will be, as follows (price each, ex works): 100�����.�3.75 1k�������2.50 5k �����.�1.25 10K������0.95 20K����..�0.50 I hope this helps. /quote So it's possible, but a little costly for a low volume application. There's likely a company in China that would do it for half the price! I'm sure they'll be glad to take your money, but lenses alone won't do it. The whole collimator business is more complicated for LED's. I don't understand what you are talking about. I explained what I wanted. They said they have made similar designs already, and gave indicative prices. Are you calling this reputable UK company a bunch of liars? -- JS |
Custom optics..
not only do they lie cheat and steel but are criminal deviants...
https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&t...+salvage+parts |
Custom optics..
James writes:
On 15/10/13 10:06, Dan O wrote: On Monday, October 14, 2013 2:33:06 PM UTC-7, James wrote: I emailed a company that makes lenses for LEDs about the possibility of having a lens made to create a beam shape similar to that of a car low beam headlight. Here's the reply... quote Hi James, Thank you for your enquiry to POL. Yes, what you are asking for is quite possible, as we have carried out similar designs for head-lamps for sports and orienteering applications, with similar beam characteristics. However, the costs for these custom designed optics are very high, so you would have to be quite sure of your future volumes to justify it. Typically, the design exercise would be around �2-2.5K and take 3-4 weeks to complete. We would then need to make tooling to injection mould the parts - the lowest cost route would be to make inserts to suit one of our existing standard optic formats, which would cost around �5-6K. If a stand-alone single impression tool were required, this would be around �12-15K! The component prices will be batch dependant and will be, as follows (price each, ex works): 100�����.�3.75 1k�������2.50 5k �����.�1.25 10K������0.95 20K����..�0.50 I hope this helps. /quote So it's possible, but a little costly for a low volume application. There's likely a company in China that would do it for half the price! I'm sure they'll be glad to take your money, but lenses alone won't do it. The whole collimator business is more complicated for LED's. I don't understand what you are talking about. I explained what I wanted. They said they have made similar designs already, and gave indicative prices. Are you calling this reputable UK company a bunch of liars? No, not at all. And I don't know the technical details - was just throwing out my impression. I also see now that you mention they already make lenses for LED applications, so know what they're doing (I guess). I know some guys bought lenses on ebay purported to optimize LED lights, and didn't like them. (I also don't see them taking the world by storm.) So am I to understand that in the _whole world_ there's not enough demand for optimized bicycle headlights to spin up production? Inconceivable! (Boy they're sure going to be sorry they missed the boat when Frank becomes mayor of Germantown, Ohio, then National Proper Cycling Tsar.) It will be interesting to see what is up around the bend. |
Custom optics..
On Monday, October 14, 2013 10:33:06 PM UTC+1, James wrote:
I emailed a company that makes lenses for LEDs about the possibility of having a lens made to create a beam shape similar to that of a car low beam headlight. Here's the reply... quote Hi James, Thank you for your enquiry to POL. Yes, what you are asking for is quite possible, as we have carried out similar designs for head-lamps for sports and orienteering applications, with similar beam characteristics. However, the costs for these custom designed optics are very high, so you would have to be quite sure of your future volumes to justify it. Typically, the design exercise would be around £2-2.5K and take 3-4 weeks to complete. We would then need to make tooling to injection mould the parts - the lowest cost route would be to make inserts to suit one of our existing standard optic formats, which would cost around £5-6K. If a stand-alone single impression tool were required, this would be around £12-15K! The component prices will be batch dependant and will be, as follows (price each, ex works): 100…………….£3.75 1k………………£2.50 5k …………….£1.25 10K……………£0.95 20K…………..£0.50 I hope this helps. /quote So it's possible, but a little costly for a low volume application. There's likely a company in China that would do it for half the price! -- JS That's pretty cheap, actually, for prototype work in Europe. When I wanted a fully triangulated bike built out of small diameter double-butted thinwall stainless steel tube, the only people interested quoted Euro 90k for the first prototype, and wanted to own the design or load the proto fee further.. If they had knocked off a zero, or had the sense to offer me royalties if I let them have the design, something I understand because I've done it all my life, I might have gone for it. As it was, this happened just when Chalo told me I was making a mistake in dismissing Utopia as an off-the shelf supplier of a bicycle functionally very near to what I wanted, and when i took another look at Utopia's bikes, I chose instant gratification rather than a two-year development process, and have been very happy since. Generally speaking -- though i might be teaching my grandmother to suck eggs -- it pays to design your own ideal unit or component of whatever, because it clarifies what exactly you want in your mind, and then for economy to buy the nearest thing available off the shelf. Note -- apologies if you know already -- that what makes the Cyo special isn't a collimator lens but the shape of the reflector into which a reversed, unlensed LED, shines to be reflected forward through the lens onto the road. Andre Jute |
Custom optics..
On 15/10/13 23:09, Andre Jute wrote:
On Monday, October 14, 2013 10:33:06 PM UTC+1, James wrote: I emailed a company that makes lenses for LEDs about the possibility of having a lens made to create a beam shape similar to that of a car low beam headlight. Here's the reply... snip So it's possible, but a little costly for a low volume application. There's likely a company in China that would do it for half the price! That's pretty cheap, actually, for prototype work in Europe. When I wanted a fully triangulated bike built out of small diameter double-butted thinwall stainless steel tube, the only people interested quoted Euro 90k for the first prototype, and wanted to own the design or load the proto fee further. If they had knocked off a zero, or had the sense to offer me royalties if I let them have the design, something I understand because I've done it all my life, I might have gone for it. As it was, this happened just when Chalo told me I was making a mistake in dismissing Utopia as an off-the shelf supplier of a bicycle functionally very near to what I wanted, and when i took another look at Utopia's bikes, I chose instant gratification rather than a two-year development process, and have been very happy since. Yeah, I was expecting the order of magnitude they quoted. I've had various things fabricated as part of my day job, and the amounts are not out of the ball park by any means. Generally speaking -- though i might be teaching my grandmother to suck eggs -- it pays to design your own ideal unit or component of whatever, because it clarifies what exactly you want in your mind, and then for economy to buy the nearest thing available off the shelf. I guess it's the availability and suitability of "the nearest thing" that is a problem. There's a plastics manufacturing company I've worked with nearby that might be able to help fabricate a one off for me to tinker with. I've seen the basic design of the collimator from the company I emailed. It doesn't look very difficult to "copy" and modify. Note -- apologies if you know already -- that what makes the Cyo special isn't a collimator lens but the shape of the reflector into which a reversed, unlensed LED, shines to be reflected forward through the lens onto the road. I didn't know that. I'm curious now how they keep the LED cool enough. They need to dissipate about 2-3 Watts I presume. Is the LED mounted on an Al pedestal or something? -- JS |
Custom optics..
On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 11:50:06 PM UTC+1, James wrote:
On 15/10/13 23:09, Andre Jute wrote: Note -- apologies if you know already -- that what makes the Cyo special isn't a collimator lens but the shape of the reflector into which a reversed, unlensed LED, shines to be reflected forward through the lens onto the road. I didn't know that. I'm curious now how they keep the LED cool enough. They need to dissipate about 2-3 Watts I presume. Is the LED mounted on an Al pedestal or something? The entire lamp is a heatsink. It's an ugly little lamp, but as a piece of Bauhaus design you can't fault it: form follows function. There is also circulating fresh air aiding the cooling on a Cyo. BUMM assumes that their users will use mudguards, so the undersides of their lamps aren't watertight and can be, and sometimes are, ruined by water splashed upward by bare tires.(1) This was the case even when they used first glowing filaments and then halogen lamps, so it was a convenient design feature to carry forward to the LED lamps. But it comes as a nasty, expensive surprise to roadies with their bare wheels that expensive German lamps aren't even as waterproof as basic Chinese lamps... BUMM, weirdly for a company all of whose products are for bicycles, vehicles open to the elements, have zero idea about how water flows. The best of the Luxos lamps, several hundred dollars, is simply ruined by the fact that the handlebar switch isn't waterproof and the stupid USB port is simply a water trap. A bicycle lamp switch that isn't waterproof is dangerous, possibly lethal. BUMM's "solution" is to mount it upside down where you can't reach it... (1) Now listen to the little BUMMbuddies screech that I am a liar, until they inspect their lamps and discover I'm right, again, as always, at which point they'll sullenly change tack, without apologizing, of course. No brains, no manners, no grace. Andre Jute Nobody's captive market |
Custom optics..
James wrote:
:On 15/10/13 23:09, Andre Jute wrote: : On Monday, October 14, 2013 10:33:06 PM UTC+1, James wrote: : I emailed a company that makes lenses for LEDs about the : possibility of having a lens made to create a beam shape : similar to that of a car low beam headlight. Here's the reply... :snip : So it's possible, but a little costly for a low volume application. : : : There's likely a company in China that would do it for half the : price! : : : That's pretty cheap, actually, for prototype work in Europe. When I : wanted a fully triangulated bike built out of small diameter : double-butted thinwall stainless steel tube, the only people : interested quoted Euro 90k for the first prototype, and wanted to own : the design or load the proto fee further. If they had knocked off a : zero, or had the sense to offer me royalties if I let them have the : design, something I understand because I've done it all my life, I : might have gone for it. As it was, this happened just when Chalo told : me I was making a mistake in dismissing Utopia as an off-the shelf : supplier of a bicycle functionally very near to what I wanted, and : when i took another look at Utopia's bikes, I chose instant : gratification rather than a two-year development process, and have : been very happy since. :Yeah, I was expecting the order of magnitude they quoted. I've had :various things fabricated as part of my day job, and the amounts are not :out of the ball park by any means. : Generally speaking -- though i might be teaching my grandmother to : suck eggs -- it pays to design your own ideal unit or component of : whatever, because it clarifies what exactly you want in your mind, : and then for economy to buy the nearest thing available off the : shelf. :I guess it's the availability and suitability of "the nearest thing" :that is a problem. There's a plastics manufacturing company I've worked :with nearby that might be able to help fabricate a one off for me to :tinker with. I've seen the basic design of the collimator from the :company I emailed. It doesn't look very difficult to "copy" and modify. : Note -- apologies if you know already -- that what makes the Cyo : special isn't a collimator lens but the shape of the reflector into : which a reversed, unlensed LED, shines to be reflected forward : through the lens onto the road. :I didn't know that. I'm curious now how they keep the LED cool enough. : They need to dissipate about 2-3 Watts I presume. Is the LED mounted :on an Al pedestal or something? It's mounted on something, yes. I've not taken apart. -- sig 118 |
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