[Shop-talk] under cabinet lighting

[Mike Rambour]

  No financial interest, no nothing, just a extremely satisfied customer.

   Its not cheap but I bought a LED flashlight a few months ago from 
this guy http://www.darksucks.com/  it is by far with NO competition 
from any other flashlight I have ever seen, the brightest thing I have 
ever owned/seen.  He uses the Cree lights, the thing is BRIGHT and 
throws a long ways.  My 4 C cell Mag light throws a beam to my fence at 
about 120-140ft. away, this flashlight illuminates that fence and the 
yard before it (and scares the skunk away before my dog gets to him).

   I started following his blog only for the very cool, very 
informative, great videos of his CNC operation and I was impressed 
enough to buy a light from him... Its now called my "daystick"

     Like I said, no financial interest, no nothing, just a extremely 
satisfied customer.

     mike

On 06/09/2011 06:31 PM, BJNoSHOV8 wrote:
> I was interested in the LED flashlights and looked into them for 
> awhile.  I found information on 2 different types of LED.  The first 
> is the standard LED that comes in a range of sizes and is used as an 
> indicator in various electronics, and also used in groups in cheaper 
> flashlights.  These things are cheap and require around 1 or 1.5V to 
> operate.  The second type are the "high power" Luxeon LED's that are 
> used in the more powerful flashlights.  These require upwards of 4V to 
> operate.  Usually a flashlight will use only one of these, and they 
> can put out a lot of light.  Recently a similar LED has come on the 
> market, called the Cree.  The better flashlights will have electronic 
> circuitry that will maintain the voltage at the proper level for the 
> LED, and these are relatively expensive.  Some flashlights do 
> overdrive the LED's a bit in order to get more light out of them.  
> This shortens the life some, but whether the life is 20,000 hours or 
> 50,000 hours or 100,000 hours probably doesn't really matter, and even 
> without overdriving them the Luxeon and Cree LED's can put out a lot 
> of light.  Streamlight, Pelican, Surefire, Inova all make good 
> flashlights using these LED's.  Even the new maglite's with LED's are 
> pretty good lights.
>
>> Possibly it falls under the category of "seriously overvolt", but 
>> there seemto be a lot of high-power LEDs on the market with much 
>> shorter averagelifetimes.