Flashlight Concept

Last crawled date: 1 year, 11 months ago

This is a quick feasability concept for a flashlight design I've been considering

Thinking of features for a more modern flash light, I thought it would be nice to have adjustable power for long runtime. A nice detented volume-knob style control could handle that and should be very intuitive

It would also be nice to use USB for both charging the flashlight, and potentially have USB ports for using the flashlight's batteries to charge mobile devices. This version is sized to fit 4x AA sized batteries in series. If those were NiMH rechargeable (1.2v) then that should be right in line with the 5V for USB

The model does have draft baked in in case this concept was selected for production, it could be detailed out.

From sketching and modeling this took about 4-5 hrs. This is a more recent (2015) project so my surfacing skills have improved quite a bit since the mouse and phone concepts in my library

For a future concept I would most likely ditch the removable battery for a permanent LiPo battery. The flashlight would already need onboard electronics to handle the USB anyway. One benefit of the way it's designed currently that I would like to preserve is the center of mass should be very central, so it would be well balanced in the hand.

The non-circular lens was a design element but most likely I would switch that to a traditional lens / bulb housing for future concepts- no need to reinvent the wheel.

If I were to proceed with this design, before spending any more time in CAD I would want to rapid prototype some physical prototypes to test ergonomics. I did locate the grip behind the knob to help locate the thumb near the knob. I think this iteration would be much too large for most people at almost 12" long. A LiPo or LiOn battery would open plenty of options for reducing the size. After coming up with an ergonomic form I could go back to sketching and create the layout/outline that would lead to my final CAD model.

I would also source the electronic components or at least narrow down their selection before attempting the final model.