The Muyshondt Advantage

What makes a flashlight made by Muyshondt better? Our products are designed to higher standards, producing brilliant, white beams and utilizing the latest cutting edge technology in order to put light where you need it. Completely designed, manufactured, and assembled within the United States, our products provide superior quality, durability, and performance whenever they're put into duty. This guide will explain some of our product's features, and also how we live up to our motto: Muyshondt - Illumination through Innovation.

The LED

LED is an acronym for "Light Emitting Diode". Originally developed in the early 1960s by Bob Biard and Gary Pittman of Texas Instruments, LEDs were limited in their usefulness to primarily technical applications, producing infrared light invisible to the human eye. Shortly after, LEDs that produced light in the visible spectrum were developed; However, the real advancement came in the 1990s with the invention of the first blue LED by Shuji Nakamura of the Nichia Corporation. Progress quickly followed, the blue light base providing researchers the foundation on which to develop the technologies to make white LEDs, which leads us to today.

LEDs are no longer the toy of the lab technician, but have become the way of the present, and the way of the future. The pace of evolution of the diode has been swift in the past decade, and the efficiencies in terms of light output per watt of heat (lumens/W) have increased dramatically. In contrast to incandescent lightbulbs, which often need to be replaced in 50 hours or less, LEDs provide for 50,000 hours of performance.

Our illumination tools use the Cree XLamp® LED, a high power, high efficiency device that can produce over 100 Lumens per watt. Superior to other products on the market today, the XLamp® consumes less power, produces less heat, and outputs more light, all in a rugged package, enabling unrivaled durability from the inside out, with no worries of breaking a filament or shattering a glass bulb.

During the manufacturing process of LEDs, standard variances exist from one diode to another; the LEDs are tested for luminous flux (brightness), color, and forward voltage, and placed in a "bin code" with all that information. We personally select our bins to have the highest possible brightness, whitest color tint, and lowest forward voltage to ensure the best overall performance and longest runtime from our batteries.

Current Regulation Technology

Unlike traditional flashlights which steadily dim over the life of the batteries, ours do not. Our flashlights utilize a constant current DC-to-DC converter, maintaining a constant supply of power to the LED, and thusly, a constant light output from the LED throughout the life of the battery. We also take the concept of electronic current regulation to the next level - an innovative two stage converter, allowing for fully regulated runtime in both high and low modes, providing a higher degree of versatility an allowing you to choose the right amount of light necessary for your task.

Hardcoat Anodizing

Anodizing is the process of running current through a metal while submerged in an acidic bath, causing a porous oxide layer to grow out of the surface of the metal. Under typical anodizing procedures (Type II), the growth of the oxide layer is thin, about one mil or 0.001 inches, is clear, and can be dyed a variety of different colors. This is the most common finish seen on aluminum alloys, and provides minimal protection.

Here at Muyshondt we use hardcoat anodizing (MilSpec Type III), a process used by the US Military to strengthen their aluminum equipment with a rugged outer finish. Hardcoat anodizing requires very high current densities traveling through the part in a chilled acid bath with tightly controlled parameters. The oxide layer grows to about 3 mils in thickness, and embeds itself partway into the substrate metal it grew out of, providing for a very tough and durable finish. The oxide layer in this process, although porous, is by nature an dark olive drab color in appearance, and can be dyed only in dark colors. Protective, durable, and made for use, hardcoat anodizing is the standard finish of our products.

The quality of the anodizing depends heavily on the quality of the metal used. Inconsistencies in the aluminum alloy being used result in off-color splotches, "tiger stripes" or dark bands running down the length of the metal due to faulty extrusion procedures, and general cosmetic imperfections and possibly a less robust coating strength. Many manufacturers cover this up by using a black dye over the anodizing and offer no options in the natural coloration. We simply use good aluminum. (Aerospace Grade 6061-T6 aluminum, to be precise)