Summary

The "Space Beam" flashlight was offered by EverReady in the 60's. The flashlight has a classic design, so I thought it would be fun to design a modernized version of it that still maintained the original lines. I made it for myself and have been using it for over a year. The one picture is lighting a tree 50 ft. away in the pitch dark. It works very nicely, and I find myself using it all the time. It throws so much light, that it can be placed practically anywhere in a room and pointed at the ceiling to act as a work light.

But recently I saw 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny', and in the scene where (spoiler) they find Archimedes’ tomb. I realized that they were carrying a Space Beam! So I decided to post it so others could make it.

This design uses Lithium batteries that are used in robot vacuums and have smart Battery Management Controllers (BMC) built into them. The BMC allows the batteries to always be connected to power when not in use, but prevents the batteries from ever being overcharged. BMCs also provide overcurrent and short circuit protection, which can cause fires. Left on the chargers when not in use, the batteries can be fully charged every time you use the flashlight.

This is a relatively complex design, please read the "Indy Flashlight Build Notes" PDF file for the details of the assembly and the parts that I used. Also verify that you can get all the parts before you start printing.

Note the STL files are high-resolution (so the prints have no visible faceting) so they are large.

The parts in the 3MF file have been configured to minimize supports, and to optimize any neccessary supports.

Note: Several parts that are not available in the Maker's Supply Store are listed in the Build Instructions PDF and below in the Other Parts section. The ‘Other Parts' links on this page are more up todate than those in the PDF. In either case, the problem with specifying a link to a part is that it can go bad, i.e., the part has been discontinued or its page has been taken down. In this case, paste the description into the Amazon Search box to see if the same part is available from another vendor. Or let me know and I will see if I can find a compatible replacement part. The heatsink is the only part that I don't know of a second source for, but heatsinkonline,com seems to be very good about not obsoleteing parts.

V1 Initial Release

V2 Beefed up mounting tabs on the Flashlight Shell part to reduce posibility of breaking.