While I was watching the IR LED with some old dashcam I noticed that still a lot of the light, which is not in the main cone of light, is unused plus the lens is 31mm instead of the ideal 47,7mm. So the best choice would be a lens about 50mm with the focal length of ~135mm. However this would make a big gun barrel and usually those bigger lenses have a longer focal length so it won’t match the LED again with its 20° angle. Also the spot diameter would be bigger though with less incrementation at distance.
So instead I’ll try to get more light from the LED and push it into a smaller angle with these reflectors:
However they don’t have a 5mm bore so the LED needs to be fixed behind it. Don’t know if there will be any advantage at all but I’ll try. Using two LEDs instead of one is still an idea but in first tests this turned into a display of two spots.
Update: Test with and without reflector, with and without achromat. It looks like the reflector is of no real use. However, these tests are made without the peak amperage of 1A which finally will be used for some microseconds per shot. So the LED emission from the LED still might be different then.
And this is what happens when using two diodes while hoping that the intensity can be doubled. It is not working with lens usage, it probably would requires some diffusor or whatever, I don’t know. I am open for ideas 😉
