Review: Sipik SK98 from Tmart

You need to be pretty good at soldering to do surface mount stuff dont you?

Any long use tests on high? These are reported to do a bit of self melting on high from several other sources…just a warning before you try.

No need to test for long use. It gets hot fast on high. Easy to tell it won’t run on high for a long time without having some kind of problem. Like most small lights, it just does not have the mass to run for a long time without overheating something.

I was curious as to how long it takes to get in the approximate “danger zone”. I probably shouldnt buy it for myself though anyway, since I do like to run my lights on high for longer periods, and my little Xiaozhi stands up to this use, though its *edit: $16 vs $13 with the above link for sk98.

Temp in degrees C every minute starting at 0 minutes:

21.1
25.0
27.3
28.9
30.2
31.8
33.3
36.1
36.5
36.5
37.1
38.8
39.6

That’s 12 minutes. I decided to stop before it went over 40 degrees. the point where it stayed at 36.5 for a minute may have been me making an error in taking the measurement.

Temp measurements were taken at the kurling on the zoomer using an IR thermometer.

Copper MCPCB and thermal paste should help the emitter a ton compared to stock.

High (2,65)- medium (0,65)- strobe

High (2,62)- medium (1,31)- low (0,35) strobe - sos

After moving the positive emitter wire you will get higher output. Emitter output is very sensitive to input voltage though. 2,65 was with NCR18650B at 4,1V, so even if you might see three amps using a fresh good low discharge cell, you will only have high current in the beginning.

Information about how to do this was found here. Thanks to nofearek9. I just hopefully made it more clear.

As I understand from Relic38s memory fix, a 330K resistor goes on top of the the capacitor (the brown thing) in the same when as when stacking resistor on top of each other right?

You guys need to start one thread and gather all the driver info like this, in one thread, where we can find it again. I will forget this valuable information by tomorrow morning and I will look for a week and never find it again, LOL.

Thanks for the info!

Isnt that the same driver as in your UltraFire LZZ-F15 ?

and in many other lights these days.. like the Skye Eye F13, Winfire, Paisen z6 u2, etc etc.

Yes, that’s the place to put it.

Higher resistance will reset the mode slower. I personally like to use 100k or lower resistor to get memory to reset under 2s.

Aren’t you bypassing the driver and just direct driving by moving the positive?

Cool. Thank you RaceR86 for the driver mod summary and illustration. You just significantly upgraded my SK98.

I want to repeat the advice to check you heat sink connection. My emitter base had a plastic reflector insulator under it.

I removed that little thing on my driver, but still have 5 modes.....

Sorry OL for going off topic!!!

No, you just bypass the current limiting resistors, the modes still work, and there is enough resistance everywhere, in this driver and your flashlight, to keep the current limited to a few amps anyway.

My has lost its next mode memory all on its own! I dont know how, been using it for about 2 weeks on a mix of high and low and it has lost the next mode memory. It always starts on high now.

Great info Guys! And thanks for the pictures with all the added instruction…hand holding needed here. :slight_smile:

Guess I will be finding out if the fasttech version is anything like this soon...I have one inbound

Awesome mod photos by the way...thanks!

Exactly like Ultrafire SG-8 CREE XM-L T6 1000LM 5 Modes Zoomable Flashlight (even cheaper)

Compared to my XR-E Q5 EZ-900 SA-9, that emitter footprint looks big! :open_mouth: I’m beginning to understand how emitter size matters in a zoomie!
Great photos & review!

Cheers

Very cheap machining in those product pics.

I found if I take a pencil and scrub across the capacitor (brown resistor above the MCU) a few times and make a heavy thick line, the next mode memory goes to a "reset back to high" after 5-10 seconds after turn off.

I am going to get some of those 20mm adapter boards from FT and put a 4*7135 in mine w/ STAR custom firmware (mine has the hollow pill too which means no go on driving it really hard, I did put some artic silver on the ledge where the emitter base sits, and a tiny bit of NOALOX on the threads to help wick the heat away but a solid pill would be MUCH better!)

nice price, just bought one off tmart!!