FryRay L1, (Now with pictures)

Will the Trustfire Flame fit?

Hey, that is very good. Actually that'd mean the 850 is the same as 818 and same as Sky Ray 3800. They did not change much. Same OTF lumens.

For lux @ 1m, the 850 has a 67mm head. The DRY, 818, 3800, TF-3T6, Uniquefire 3900 all have 56mm heads. Some diff here...

If my guess is correct, your 850's output is 1600L OTF (as what i and ergotelis measured for the SR3800). So the Sky Ray L1 is 2250L OTF. DRY is 2500L OTF (it can be 300-400 lumens more easily in a v cold place + wind to wick out the heat fast coz it's overdriven and the degree depends on you cell's voltage).

The main advantage of this is heat - with 5 XM-Ls "sharing the load" it gets well over 2000L OTF without breaking a sweat, operation for 15 mins shouldn't be an issue and won't get very hot at all. XM-Ls operating at below 1.5A is cool...extremely efficient.

While the L1 is 2250L OTF, the throw i cannot really give a confirmation on it as you measured at 2.5 to 3m (try 8-10m even though it's a flooder, it's easier and less mistakes).

2.5m @ 3760 = 23500 cd. The DRY gets you 25k on the ~ 10% under-reading DX meter. (you can add 10% more) I more or less know this as i have compared with some other guy's meters on CPF (mostly the HID thrower guys so they know their stuff). There are some figures here on LPF that i see which are very much optimistic. This does not matter for a ceiling bounce which uses relative figures for comparison with other known lights, but this matters for throw.

What brand is your DMM?

I just took the light for a walk. It did fine on high for the 20 min walk, barely got warm at all. It is really bright, much more so than my SR-850, and the tint is so much nicer too. I find that I grow more fond of it the more I use it : ) Might be that I will grab another one, from CNQG this time since Ric actually does some QA.

The not so hard driven penta-XML setup is the main reason that I got this, it has potential for some "overclocking".

I looked at the regulator board and found the sense resistor "stack", as there are three of them piled on top of each other. The top one reads R200, so 0.2 Ohm. I'll not try changing values until I can get replacement drivers. Though the driver runs fairly cool so I expect that you could squeeze a little more juice out of it without releasing the magic smoke. A 20-30% increase perhaps? But that will have to wait.

My multimeter is a "Mastech", cheap thing I got off of DX. I have a uni-trend clampmeter also, but it is not really suitable for this kind of precise measurement. The luxmeter I used is a DX "CT-1330B" version.

A thought just crossed my mind: If I get a second one I could use two extensions and do a DD/AMC7135 setup out of one for some really impressive output. How many lumen does 5 XML blazing at 3A put out? 800 a piece? That would be 4000 lumen crazy! Question is, is the voltage high enough?

There is not much to it, the 3x has a triangular spill beam pattern and the 5x has a more square spill beam pattern, the hotspots are in both cases round with no obvious artefacts. The 3x has deeper reflectors so its hotspot is slightly more defined.

You don't need no drivers for 5X XM-L and 2 more extensions on DD, just run the cells from 4.0V down. From what I see, the heat performance should be the same as DRY, no issue for 1 minute runs, 2 mins max. The good thing is that the design is the same as the SR3800 rev 0 and the DRY.

It's easy, in your country at this time of the year you probably get 2700L OTF with 3 XM-Ls. You'd get 4500L OTF with 5. You can pull this off with 4 amps, but your host needs to be cool probably host surface not more than 15 deg C (hence ambient needs to be quite a bit lower, preferably with the aid of wind)

You could bypass the driver, so at least it's usable later. Need to see if the 5 emitters are in series though (I think so).

The tint is probably 1C/1D from your description.

PS. Where to get the extensions? Maybe Ric can source for ya. Needless to say, you need to know what you are doing to pull this off (includ cells monitoring)

Thanks for checking this flashlight out for us SPAMBOOT!. I am in a thinker corner and twisting about buy or not. How is the heatsink? is it fixed with a reflector on its own? Or is it a dropin module as the Sky Ray 3x XML ? This flashlight should have some crazy potential if the heat management is good

Isn't this the driver for L1 5xT6 ? http://www.manafont.com/product_info.php/flashlight-diy-part-circuit-board-for-pentaleds-modes-module-p-8002

Cnqualitygoods is currently selling $85.00 only!

cnqualitygoods needs $8.50 shipping for me (unregistered to be same as Manafont). KD is a bit lower.

BTW SPAMBOT, do you have any single XM-L lights to do a ceiling bounce side by side with the L1 again so that i can have another relative figure to compare? Yezl, Ultrafire C8, UF-980L, anything? P60s are not advisable.

Unfortunately the Shadow TC6 one that i have is NW, plus there are some variation in the drive level (some are 2A, mine is 2.5A)...so can't compare.

It is neither a drop in nor is it a threaded drop in like in the SR-850. The external parts of the flashlight head is in four pieces: a bezel, a solid conical piece that the LED's and reflector is mounted to, a square flanged part that houses the regulator and finally a fluted retaining ring which holds the regulator PCB in place. The heat sinking is good, but if you plan on going for crazy power you may want to add some thermal grease to the threads between the conical and the flanged parts.

I thought so too, and at first glance they look very similar. Their layout is different however. Could be it is still a usable replacement, but it is not a direct replacement.

Only usd91.90 + 2.27 for registered air parcel at bestinone.net.

$15 cheaper, figures...

I had to go searching for the original thread to find this one. Spambot, thanks for the report. I'm still on the fence, but since I held off on buying any of the triple XM-L lights, I'm very tempted. I'd like the TK-70 since I have a TK-35 and I like the quality, I just can't bring myself to drop $200 on one. So do you guys think someone will come out with one that has a different battery configuration or more emitters?

Right now, I have 3 C8s ghetto-taped together. LOL

Thanks for the review SPAMBOT. I really need to justify that +40~45 USD between this light and Trustfire's 3T6, or maybe I can get a NW Shadow with that moneytoo. I understand this light feeds every led with ~1.5Amps, right? And the driver pill seems to have cables twisted in some pictures I found. Do they look like they will break easily?

Only if you don't loosen the regulator retaining ring first. Loosen that ring before unscrewing the conical part from the flanged heat sink part and there is no wire twisting occurring at all. I cannot comment on how much each 1,27A is the LED current, I just measured it with my clampmeter at its 40A range.

(1,27*15)/(1,77*12)=0,897. 89,7% efficacy, not bad!

Hi SPAMBOT, i ordered one, couldn't stand it...just needed to find out. :D

Can I ask how much current at the tail are you getting from the Shadow TC6 neutral white? With fully charged batteries if possible, or at least > 4.15V.

For me the reflected ceiling bounce is 55. Yours is 46. The DRY CW in Turbo is 250 at my place.

So the L1 should fare pretty nicely. Your current figures esp from the clamp meter seem a little low though but we all know how much variances these can have. (ceiling bounce with lux meter + direct beam is always nicest). But anyway any info is better than no info. :)

The TC6 is the 2A version, so ~1A at the tail while yours should be ~1.2A at the tail. My Skyray just fried : / Shipping it back to manafont would be prohibitively expensive, so that is not an option. Perhaps this regulator could be altered to serve as a replacement?

WTF.... cancel cancel! Mine's from CNqualitygoods so i guess i'd need to select something else.

How is your driver in the L1 different from this one?

http://www.manafont.com/product_info.php/flashlight-diy-part-circuit-board-for-pentaleds-modes-module-p-8002

Uh-oh !! Sorry to hear that.:( I guess I'll need to keep with something more reliable like 3T6 but I already have two TR1200 bodies at home and it doesn't feel special at all.

I guess Benckie is right to avoid the Fry Rays. My Uniquefire 3900 "drop-in" is still going strong though, but i haven't really put it in high.

SPAMBOT, did you use your cells up all the way to low-voltage cut off? I am thinking if the drivers have problem boosting.

The TF 3T6 just drops out of regulation and runs DD.

Mind you, this is not a $50 light frying, in which you can easily DD it. I am not sure if i'd wanna DD with 5 x 18650 starting @ 3.9V, even if i have the extensions (it might fit with the TR-1200 and triple XM-Ls and stuff like that).

Different circuit board layout for one. Might be that one and the one from DX uses the same boost controller, but all three have different layouts.

Never run the cells down to pcb shutoff, I did 35 min run time max before recharge. It is bad practice to run until the protection kicks in and may it damage the boost circuit.

I would not do a 5 cell DD, too dangerous. I like my hands and would not want to part with them due to flashlight "pipe bomb".

Now that the driver has kicked the bucket, I could do a 3A ceiling bounce test with my bench supply.