Ed Scherer

Great, thanks!

Alan

I'm pretty sure it will work fine - the headlight adjuster range is really very small - you don't need to move the lens far for the range of adjustment you need for aiming - and if you think about it the whole pod moves with the lens - the only things that don't move are the yoke & the base.

Alan

Glen McCartney

Ed, the screws are flathead, M2, length is 7.5mm. I should be able to get to installing this weekend and I'll measure the temps of the heat sinks and barrel and post here.

Ed Scherer

OK, thanks. Everything is a little scaled down from the model I was working with. I'm trying to come up with a bracket solution that will work with that LED driver module. I was hoping for less variation across these different models.

Glen McCartney

Steve mentioned in an email that these were his latest version, probably accounting for some of the differences.

Ed Scherer

Glen, I'm just looking at screws: for a M2 rounded-head screw, if given a choice between 8 mm and 10 mm, which would be better, given that the bracket is 1.5 mm thick (using rounded head to avoid needing a countersink for flat head)? 9 mm would be ideal, but I think I can only get 8 mm or 10 mm. It's a question of how (deep and where started) the hole in that module is threaded.

I might just go with 10 mm and then a ~1 mm thick washer, which might be a good idea anyway, since I'm using pre-fab brackets that have 3 mm holes.

Also, are there any other mounting aids on the module? Ears, slots, whatever? Kind of hard to tell from your micro-picture.

Glen McCartney

10mm would be the way to go. There are no other mounting aids, the module is just a square box with the leads coming out of each end.

traxtar928

This is great, Ed... at this point, I wonder if it's worth following through on my design since you've already produced results. I still have to price out a quantity of 3D printed parts and see what the break even point would be.

Let me know what your price will be for those that helped along the way. ;-)

Glen McCartney

Ed, Got around to installing the latest version of the Woodypeck H4 LED's today.
Took temperature of the braided heat sinks and the metal heat sink of the controller before turning on and after 5 minutes. With low beams on the both heat sinks were 10 degrees higher, and with the high beams the temps were 20 degrees higher.

Ed Scherer

It would be interesting to compare. Material costs, print time, and suitability of material used for printing all come into play. I don't know enough to offer a well-informed opinion.

Sure.

The heat sink braids only increased by a maximum of 20 °F? Thus staying under 120 °F (assuming ambient temperature under 100 °F)? That sounds fantastic. Either the LEDs are much more efficient than the ones I've been working with, or the effective surface area of those braided heat sinks is bigger than I thought (or both).

Perhaps I need to get some of those LED bulbs myself to play with.

Glen McCartney

Ed, the braid temp was 71 before turning them on. On low beam after 5 minutes, the highest temp on braids measured 81, when I put in high beams, the temp raised to 92 after about 4 minutes.

Ed Scherer

Got done with that and made another cap. I like the way this worked out. It's very easy for me to just flatten these 90° pre-fab brackets a little (by 10° to 80°).

I think I'm finally happy with this.

This prototype also has the same little imperfection as the previous one due to some holes that I was using for holding the sheet down now being in an unfortunate location. Those "half holes" on the sides of the ears will be gone once I move to a new sheet of material.

Due to the smaller brackets, I've moved from M4 to M3 hardware for the cap ear to bracket fasteners. And due to the relatively short length of the brackets, I'm just using two screws instead of four to fasten the LED driver module to the brackets. It still seems very secure.

I didn't have any M3 rounded head hex drive screws handy, so I used M3 rounded head Phillips drive screws instead. I don't like them as much: it's a little harder to assemble with Phillips head, IMHO, and the Phillips head screws stick out a little more than hex drive (2.50 mm vs. 1.65 mm). Then again, everyone has a Phillips screwdriver. Does everyone have a 2 mm hex driver? Hmmm...

Some photos. It probably won't look much different than what I was showing for prototype #3 in post #54, post #55, and post #56.

Things to notice:

• Different (smaller) brackets.
• Tooling marks are a little larger because most pockets are now being cut with larger cutters. (I'm optimizing machining time as things fall into place).
• M3 hardware instead of M4 hardware on bracket to cap ear fasteners.
• Bracket countersink on front of ears is now symmetrical on each ear (and the two ears' inside edges are are 2 mm closer together to each other).
• LED driver module sits 1 mm higher (that's very obvious, isn't it? ).
• Labels added.
• Seam on silicone seal around the perimeter is pretty crummy. I'm experimenting with different ways of doing the splice. This one didn't work very well. I need to get the right kind of flexible adhesive next time around.

Ed Scherer

What's next? There's one more thing I want to do before cranking out a bunch using Delrin: moving from 10 caps per sheet of material to 18 caps per sheet of material. I left a lot of space on the sheet material for each unit while I was still working out what the cap would look like. But now that I know the final size, I can pack them in more tightly.

I'll try to get this done within the next week or two. While doing that, I'll probably ship the cap I just showed in the previous post to Jim Corenman to make sure it works OK given any position of the headlight adjuster (Jim is one of the few people I know here in the USA with headlight adjusters).

I'm also thinking about the 25 mm barrel version. Perhaps I need to make one of those and test it (or send it to somebody for testing). It's also going to require a slightly different bracket arrangement due to the smaller LED driver modules that come with those bulbs, but I've got something in mind that I think will work. I might just order one of the bulbs I mentioned back in post #68 (the CHTOOLIGHT Cree Car LED Headlight Conversion Kit, also sold on Amazon as ), since that seems to be the same as the kind some of you have.


Oh yeah, and, as you can see from the last couple of photos in the previous post, I need to wash my car.

jcorenman

Ed, that looks terrific, great work!!

I am happy to check fit, but looking at your last picture I think it is a total non-issue. Your cap, as installed , is completely inside the envelope of the existing reflector housing, spring, etc.

Glen McCartney

Sign me up for a pair, they look great.