A Flashlight For Any Occasion

Whether you’re trying to light your path, build your own night vision, or do some tanning at home, this flashlight has you covered. [David Prutchi] designed the high power flashlight with three swappable heads.

He built the base unit out of aluminum pipe. It’s got plenty of room for the four 9V batteries that act as the power source. The driver circuit is just a bit smaller than one of those batteries, and to bring the whole thing together [David] and his helper added a potentiometer, toggle switch, and quick connector which makes head swaps a breeze. The heads themselves are all LED based, with one for visible light, another for infrared, and the final module outputs ultraviolet. We joke about tanning with it, but at 10 Watts you should be more worried about accidental damage to your vision.

The finished product is shown checking the security ink on some Canadian Currency. This would also make a nice secondary light source for your night vision monocle.

13 thoughts on “A Flashlight For Any Occasion

  1. I was going to complain about the use of 9Vs because they typically don’t have high mAH ratings, but the article says they are using Lithium based 9Vs which have over double the capacity compared to standard 9Vs(according to wikipedia). Great build and write up.

    1. Good thing they still make 9 V “transistor radio batteries” not only do my smoke and Co detectors use use them I sill have a functioning analog display FETVOM that requires one.

  2. looks like you are getting up into the kind of power that a laser has.

    just add a lens to bring the light to a point and you have a laser.

    dont go shining the light at aircraft, cars or watercraft as (i know) beaming a aircraft can get you a federal prison time.

    while it does not mention it is illegal it is still very unsafe

    http://www.laserpointersafety.com/laser-hazards_aircraft/laser-hazards_aircraft.html

    this one does mention incidents of beaming aircraft

    http://www.laserpointersafety.com/sentences/sentences.html

    http://www.laserpointersafety.com/ is the starting place for everything about mostly lasers but possibly today’s ultra bright leds may be included

    1. You do not make a laser out of focusing a regular INCOHERENT light to a tight spot (and it will not be that tight given the fact that the source LED’s are quite extended). All your other comments are correct.

    2. Although if Wikipedia is any resource; the UV light that this flashlight although intense, is at to low of energy to cause damage to skin and will not likely be focusable to any dangerous levels by the human eye (although it still could possibly damage your lens through absorption).

      Although I wouldn’t recommend staring directly into the LED’s, they aren’t dangerous enough to warrant precautions greater than common sense.

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