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wind up torch

This topic has 33 replies, 16 voices, and was last updated 11 February 2012 at 17:20 by martin perman 1.

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29 January 2012 at 22:47 #30365
Ady1
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@ady1
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29 January 2012 at 22:47 #83413
Ady1
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@ady1
More a gadgets thread I suppose

I’ve had a few wind up torches which have been…kinda ok but nothing impressive but tonight i was at a friends when I had to go and find the dogs in the garden

So I got handed this dogchewed windup torch which was a nice solid rubber/plastic QVC unit which was dead, and spent a few seconds winding some power into it

When I went outside it lit up the whole damn garden, it was a gadgeteers dream unit, lasted for ages too

It doesn’t matter if your electricity gets cut off for a week or you’re away camping or scrabbling about in some dark corner of the garage or garden or the car breaks down in the middle of the highlands at midnight.

You’ve got a really good bright light “forever”, they really do have these things sorted out now.

When I got home I bought one instantly

A few manufacturers sell them, Baylis and TCL to name two

it has 5 LEDs

self winding maxi pro torch

Prices are highly variable so search about

You could quite happily go and live in the jungle or the Sahara for a year with this kinda gear, torch batteries are finally truly obsolete
29 January 2012 at 22:54 #83414
Francis Sykes
Participant
@francissykes95134
The big gain here I think has been LED technology. Lots of light now for little power. I’ve been buying 5LED battery torches recently and not necessarily keeping the LED’s in the torch… Cost is around £2 including some dodgy AAA batteries!

I’m planning on combining a couple of these units with some old mains phone chargers I’ve got to put some lighting onto the milling machine.

Slightly different tack, I got a Phillips GU10 replacement LED spotlamp to replace a blown one in the bathroom, you know, the ones they seem to put everywhere in modern houses that take a fair wattage and last 5 mins each. Finally they’ve got it right with colour, brightness and beam spread, and 4W instead of 35W.
30 January 2012 at 01:17 #83423
Ady1
Participant
@ady1
The masterplan is to use is as a permanent “nightlight” in the hallway, on one LED

A couple of minutes winding should cover the entire evening, just leave it on.

It’s supposed to last for 5 days on a full charge…uh-huh, okay, we shall see.

I’m always wandering about in the pitch dark as I move from the bedroom to the kitchen etc and I just KNOW that one day I’m going to fall over the damn dog or something daft

At the very least it will be getting a thorough testing
30 January 2012 at 08:32 #83430
Gray62
Participant
@gray62
I’ve been using the 3W tri-led MR16 bulbs from Maplin in my mill lights for a while now, the light output from 2 of gives a more even illumination than a 20W halogen lamp and has a warmer, more natural light.
30 January 2012 at 09:23 #83432
Ady1
Participant
@ady1
Modern LEDs seem to be very versatile.

I had some useless-for-my-camera “heavy duty” hyundai batteries and some poundland bits.

So I broke an LED from a 7-LED $1 headlamp array and wired it up manually, then deliberately wired it the wrong way round to see if it survived.

If you need a low level light source then one LED is fine.

The 7-LED array would have made a very good source for a lathe light, it’s knackered now though, I presume they were wired in series/parallel…whatever

If you have any clever ideas, modern LEDs from those poundland shops appear to be a real doddle to work with

Edited By Ady1 on 30/01/2012 09:24:44
30 January 2012 at 09:35 #83433
John Stevenson 1
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@johnstevenson1
We have always had a light on all night on the upstairs landing, first because of young kids and later because of big dogs.

Last Year I found some 1W mains LED’s on Ebay and bought a couple.

OK for 1W you don’t get a lot but it’s still enough to see your way by.

Also found some 2W ones and these are bright enough in a bedside light to read by.
30 January 2012 at 10:05 #83436
Les Jones 1
Participant
@lesjones1
Hi All,

I have found that the rechargeable battery in some of my wind up torches has lost its ability to hold a charge for any reasonable amount of time. Therefore they are not quite foolproof in situations such as a torch left in the car which may not be used for several years. I agree with CoalBurner that replacing 12 volt QH spot lamps with 3 or 4 watt LED units works very well. I found that the 35W light on my lathe got too hot to touch. It is only slightly warm with the 4W LED bulb. I have now found some lights from IKEA using single 3W LED’s (Jansjo) that are small enough to get close to the work on the mill or the lathe. These were only £9.99 so it’s not worth making a housing for MR16 LED’s in future. I recently bought an LED torch using a single 3 or 5 W “Cree” LED from China or Hong Kong which uses 3 AAA cells but gives more light than one of the 6 volt lantern torches which uses a 996 battery.

Les.
30 January 2012 at 10:09 #83437
Ian S C
Participant
@iansc
I got a wind up torch/ radio for Christmas. There is a strong demand for these here in Christchurch, and surrounding area, theres at least a dozen different one available. I was interested to see that my nephews little boy (and all the rest of the kids at his school) got a wind up torch/ radio given to them, it is one of the more expensive ones, it also has solar cells to keep an internal battery charged. Since our earthquakes started, most house holds have upped the content of the emergency supplies box. Ian S C
30 January 2012 at 10:37 #83439
MICHAEL WILLIAMS
Participant
@michaelwilliams41215
When I was a young lad growing up in a country district the only available option for emergency outdoor lighting was a pump lamp – basically a blowlamp with mantle .

If you’d knew what you were doing you could just about get one of these going in about fifteen minutes .

If it was somebody that had not tried before and who couldn’t find the lamp in the dark anyway the emergency was usually long over before you got any light at all .

Edited By MICHAEL WILLIAMS on 30/01/2012 10:42:55
30 January 2012 at 13:27 #83452
Ian S C
Participant
@iansc
Back in the 1950s we had regular, sceduled power cuts, and I remember doing my homework from school by the light o a 200 candle power Tilly pressure lamp.

Sept 2010when the earthquakes started, I ran one of my hot air engines with a generator powering a radio until the power came on again later in the day. Ian S C
30 January 2012 at 13:28 #83453
chris stephens
Participant
@chrisstephens63393
I think the problem with the cheap wind up torches is that they use Ni-Cad batteries, and as we all know they suffer badly from Alzheimer’s, sorry, memory problems. So, to make them last longer don’t wind up till totally flat, or replace the battery with a NiMH one or even more modern equivalent.

chriStephens
30 January 2012 at 15:07 #83458
Ady1
Participant
@ady1
The Baylis one I got has an NiMh battery and a “three phase” contactless power winder using neodymium magnets

That Baylis chap was the guy who invented the clockwork radio in the 1980s

So on paper it seems to be pretty good, first impressions were very good.

…will see how it goes…
30 January 2012 at 16:51 #83462
Clive Hartland
Participant
@clivehartland94829
Sainsbury are selling a 72Led plate lamp that runs off 4 AA batteries. I have just bought one and am about to check its output as illumination on my lathe, if any good I will power it from a transformer.

Clive
7 February 2012 at 12:57 #84113
Ady1
Participant
@ady1
Jackpot on the nite lite

The package I got came with “phone charger” bits and a headtorch

The wind up torch is good for about thirty minutes of proper torchlight but the discharge rate is too high for it to be useful as an all night candle or night light
The battery must be a high discharge kinda thing 600Ma

…however
I wired up one of those low rating LEDs from the poundland shop array
With the first one I charged the torch with it still connected…pop
With the second I connected it up with a full battery charge…pop

So I gave it a couple of winds, and then switched the torch on to full beam, letting it discharge to a dimmer light, switched off, then connected the cheapo LED up
The phone charger connection has a 2-pin connector where you simply slip the LED in

…it ran all night no probs…

So I wind it twice, discharge using the main beam, then plug in the LED and get a very functional low power lite for the whole night

So once I’ve figured out how to make a bottle of rum last for 12 months I can live anywhere in the world
7 February 2012 at 13:27 #84118
Martin W
Participant
@martinw
If you are going to run a LED from a battery or any DC source then you need to have enough voltage to drive the LED which is about 3v for a white LED and limit the current through it to about 20-30ma for a standard 5 or 10mm LED. Just putting a LED across a battery is like putting a car bulb across the mains (simple analogy) but the result can be the same.

To work out the correct resistor value, in ohms, subtract 3 from the supply voltage and multiply the result by 40, so for a 12v DC source and one LED its 9 x 40 which gives a resistor value of around 360 ohms. This will give nominal working current of 25 ma. If you want longer life from your battery increase the resistor value until you get the time you want but this will at the expense of brightness.

Provided that the source voltage is not exceed several LEDs can be wired up in series and a suitable resistor used. In this case multiply 3 by the number of LEDs subtract this value from the source voltage, this result MUST be positive, and multiply by 40 again. This is more efficient as more power is developed in the LEDs rather than being wasted in the resistor.

LEDs can be bought on Ebay few a few pounds per 100 in a variety of colours.

Hope this helps.

Martin
7 February 2012 at 20:30 #84135
Speedy Builder5
Participant
@speedybuilder5
How about stripping one down and incorporate into a dolls house – green energy, and after a few turns – delighted grandaughter.
7 February 2012 at 21:14 #84138
Ian P
Participant
@ianp
I know Baylis invented? the wind-up radio, but who gets the credit for the wind up torch I wonder?

I know these torches have been arround for a while now but I first saw a hand powered torch over 60 years ago! As a child (in about 1958) one of my uncles took me with him when he visited a neighbour who had built his own television. I remember seeing two big metal chassis with lots of valves and a round CRT, it was during the daytime so I did not see it working. To amuse me he showed me a remote controlled (via a wire) model car, which I now know was made in Germany.

He also had a torch (which I vaguely recall he got from a german soldier) that illuminated by moving a lever. It was a rectangular shape with a lever similar to a hand stapler which you squeezed against the casing. There must have been a rack and pinion, a freewheel and a flywheel so that repeated squeezing against a return spring built up the speed of the flywheel and generating device. I am sure there was no battery so the light went out as soon as you stopped.

I’m curious, does anyone know anything about the thing I saw?

Ian P
7 February 2012 at 21:32 #84139
frank brown
Participant
@frankbrown22225
Ian P, my Father also brought one back as a souvenir from the war. From memory it was a chocolate brown colour with a beige lever and lens trim, don’t know what happened to it.

Frank
7 February 2012 at 23:49 #84146
Ady1
Participant
@ady1
Sounds like a variation on a bicycle dynamo, which have been around for donkeys years.

Still got a functional one on my old bike.
8 February 2012 at 10:21 #84159
Gordon W
Participant
@gordonw
I have a torch with hand lever and mini dynamo. It’s in the car now, always works, not much use when wheel changing in the dark, but ok when walking home. It was made in Russia, and came in a good old fashioned heavy cardboard box. PS my car is not very waterproof so modern electronics don’t last long.
8 February 2012 at 19:13 #84184
Sub Mandrel
Participant
@submandrel
> took me with him when he visited a neighbour who had built his own television. I remember seeing two big metal chassis with lots of valves and a round CRT,

Yesterday a friend was telling me how his father had made his own TV in a box the size of a sideboard witha green oscilloscope type tube give I a picture about 6″ across. Apparently most of teh neighbours came round to watch the Coronation on it. Must be a while ago now then, I wonder how long?

Neil
8 February 2012 at 19:45 #84189
Ian P
Participant
@ianp
Neil

Well, the last coronation we had in the UK (if you discount the Gordon Brown one) was in 1953.

I think about that time and a bit later, quite a few radio amateurs an electronic wizards made televisions (and oscilloscopes) with government surplus radar display tubes. They were about 5″ diameter and very green.

Ian P
8 February 2012 at 19:50 #84191
Les Jones 1
Participant
@lesjones1
Hi Neil,

I think that TV was built long before ITV came on the air. My father also built a TV similar to the one you describe. It used government surplus parts. The sound and vision receivers were totally separate units unlike bought TV’s I even remember the 6″ cathode ray tube was a VCR97. (A later used one of these to build my first oscilloscope.) I think it was in the late 1940’s that my father built this TV. ITV did not start in our area until 1956.

Les.
9 February 2012 at 20:43 #84266
Sub Mandrel
Participant
@submandrel
Ian – yes he said a radar screen, but I foolishly thought he had mis-remembered that! Apparently his father was a hatter, obviously one of many talents.

ITV? No he was talking about THE Coronation, not Coronation Street!

Neil
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