3D Printed Powerful Flashlight With Air Cooling

Hello readers welcome again to my another great project! In this instructables i will show you how you can make a 3D printed flashlight that is very bright and powerful and the best part is it is air cooled!

Are you a camping person or a hiking person if you need a light source at night that you can depend upon i would suggest you building this project.

I would say this is a great project to build for yourself, This light has a great backup and the batteries are rechargeable.

The 18650 batteries can be charged with electricity or a solar power, In the daytime you can charge these batteries and during the night you can use this, The 6000mah batteries will give long hours of backup.

This lamp uses 10w smd LED and is very bright to cool the backpanel of this LED i will use a mini PC fan that is used in the cooling of CPU of the computers.

Frame for this light is made using the 3d printed parts and i have given all the Stl for this project that is originally designed and tested by me.

In the future i have a plan to make liquid cooled version of this project and collecting ideas from the creators like you! So let me know if you have any design which you think will outperform the current version.

I have given a working as well as detailed project building video of this project in the end part of this project, Dont miss to check it out.

LED Panel of SMD type 10W from here

CPU cooling fan of 40x40mm

Battery holder (3 cell of 18650 type)

18650 batteries x 3

Switch

Copper stranded cables

3D printer

PLA filament

Slicing software

Computer

Hot glue and superglue

Paper

paper glue

Scissors and wire trimmers

The design that you are seeing is made on Tinkercad and i have given my files below you can also edit this design if you are willing to make more changes, I recommend if you are newbie use the same one.

The first and foremost thing I did when I had the idea of making this lamp is how can i make the entire design compact but also achieve great performance.

I made several designs out of which I finally sticked upon this one, Let me tell you about that now

The design is in the shape of a plus and in the center i have given a space that will hold the LED, The 4 legs will be connected to back part of the battery holder.

The height is elevated so that the PC fan can be added below, This will allow sufficient space.

Also the parts will consume less materials at the time of printing that in return will reduce the printing time to a great extent.

The air coming out(hot air) from the LED panel can flow freely to the outside since none of the parts will obstruct airflow.

I have given the STL files below, Download them and open on any slicing software, There is no need of using any rafts or supports at the time of printing.

The choice of pla filament color is left to you, You need to print 3 parts.

The first one is the plus shaped frame and the second is the battery holder and the last one is the frame but with no legs you can do this by stopping the printer when it starts to print the legs.

Print time is less than 2 hours and there is no need of any post processing after the print is complete.

The LED comes with non soldered pin and the back plate is made of metal so the challenge here is the frame back part has to be airborne and in case if you are using water cooled or fin cooled panels you can attach these to them.

That is another complex task which will need more and more components and it will also increase the overall cost of the project along with increase in the size of project.

I solved this problem in this way, I soldered the copper wires to the dedicated pins with the sufficient solder deposit, Repeat the same for the other side too.

You can also use single stranded wires that is thick but in few cases if the cooling systems fail there is high chances that the entire wire lines will stop working because of heat.

I recommend using thick copper wires on this LED panels because it is good in working in heat conditions.

Now this LED is ready to be added in the 3D printed frame, in the other way these wires also help in the LED suspending on the frame so adding a wire of decent quality is recommended.

Frame is the part that is attached to the backside of the battery holder and it holds LED as well as the cooling fan, So it has to be strong and i have given it a additional layer of strength by adding a piece.

Add hot glue all over the surface and gently place the plus shaped part, You can make this part by 3d printing the frame and removing those sides(not to print them at the time of print)

Press on this part for some time until the excess glue is spilled of and the glue becomes dry.

Place the LED panel on the frame and glue the wires as shown in the steps above, Now the battery case needs to be placed inside the 3d printed case.

I have designed this battery case so that you can fit a battery holder along with 1 or 2 switches, in my case i will use a single switch.

Drop the hot glue inside this frame and place the battery holder and allow to dry completely, This will finish the base part now we can work on the air cooling part.

The LED gets heated up soon so it will need a steady airflow, Hence we need to work on cooling part and let us do that in the next step.

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The DC fan also few call a pc cooling fan was scavenged from my old mini CPU unit, You can find this at any computer service center or hobby electronics shop, Consider getting a small one and i have given an online method of getting this the supplies section above.

The frame that i used was designed to fit a 4x4cm PC fan, So here i will show how you can properly configure this on the frame.

I made tubes of paper that measured 1.5cm each and with the help of hot glue i joined this on the sides of PC fan, Now you can connect both the wire and if necessary trim of the additional cables.

Repeat the same steps for all the other remaining sides of fan, Allow to dry completely and adjust the tubes so that everything is leveled.

Check the alignment and now to all 4 ends of the tube add a drop of hot glue and now press this on the 3d printed frame, Hold it for sometime and when it becomes dry the cooling setup is ready.

This setup can be placed on the battery holder using the hot glue, Secure the joints well with decent amount of glue and if necessary you can add additional layers of gluing too.

This is the fruit of our effort! The working of this project is very good to see.

I have intentionally connected the dc cooling fan and LED to the same power source and both work using the same power from the battery.

If you have proper control boards like the PC fan speed controller or a brightness controller for LED you can use it considering the fact that if proper power is not received for the PC fan the air flow becomes obsolete and it will cause heating on the LED back panel damaging the LED also it may heat up the 3d printed frame.

So i would suggest not to use any other controller and better to allow both the electronics(PC fan and LED) with the same power that will run at their full capacity thereby giving out the best performance.

This is a great tool to carry when you are camping where you can charge the batteries during the day using solar power and using these batteries to power this lamp on the night.

The lamp is very bright and can brighten up the surroundings at the press of a button.

One thing you have to keep in mind is this LED is open and you might need to take care when you are taking this gadget in and around areas where there is liquids or water substance

This is all about this project, If you any suggestions for improvements you can tell me the same on the comments i would be very happy to consider your ideas and probably making a version 2 of this lamp.

The light brightness can be checked here in this video where you will get to know how this light can be helpful in different dark situations.

I also have a plan of making a more advanced version of this lamp and if you have any ideas on it let me know.

Consider sharing this project with your camping friends or someone whom you think needs this device! Anyways sharing is caring right.

Like always if you have any questions ask me in the comments and I will answer all of your queries soon.

Thank you for reading this and showing interest in my project, See you on my another interesting project!