your build is what made me want to build this light. haha. as soon as i found out about the Z1 i wanted to build one, i just didnt know what LED i wanted.
your build is what made me want to build this light. haha. as soon as i found out about the Z1 i wanted to build one, i just didnt know what LED i wanted. it would be nice to get ahold of a few of the brass pills and have a few different led and driver setups for it. have a xpg, maybe sst 90, xhp 70, oslon IR, xp-l. lol
Same here, it was LSK’s build that inspired me too. Not my first modded Z1 however.
this probably wont be my last. unless i can get ahold of some spare brass or copper pills, then i will get some more drivers and leds and build a few versions.
so even with all the street lights, the dome and phosphor completely gone, and running 2 laptop pull 18650 batteries that arent even fully charged. i can see the beam reflecting off street signs that are 1500 feet away. i dont have a camera good enough to get any outdoor beam shots though. if i saw it correctly, i am not sure if they were windows in a house or the windows in the loading dock near it, but the loading dock was 1700 feet. house is 1300 or so. was hard to tell cause i can only see the beam reflecting off stuff that will reflect. like glass, street signs, etc. once i get the new MT-G2 and keep the dome on i will see how it does.
in fact the batteries were only at 3.79v each. 2 freshly charged 18650s got me some extra brightness at same distances. it is just too hard to tell with the tint of it other than reflective stuff
for the other people running this same basic light, what kind of tail cap amp readings do you get?
I’d measure mine, but I’m concerned it’ll pop the 10A fuse in my DMM. If you are getting a reading below 10A on yours I’ll risk the fuse and test mine for comparison.
1.5A but still as bright as id expect it to be… let me try with another multi meter
my old 15a rated mechanical meter was only saying like .5a. so i know that is not right. i have a light here with a XP-G2 and 3.04A q lite driver and the multi meter says .6a on high for it. both of my 3.8A PflexPRO built L2P with XP-L leds are reading .9a. any of those numbers seem right?
They all seem quite low to me. A Q.lite driver with a good battery on an XP-G2 generally gives me 2.8ish amps at the tail.
freshly charged and the light is just as bright as i would expect. hmmmm. i bet its the meter
tried a different meter. got 2.5a on the XP-G2 on high, and 4.98 - 5.08 on the MT-G2 on high.
Just for you (not really, it’s been on my to-do list) I made a .001 ohm shunt wire and tested the light. The batteries aren’t fresh, probably used for about 3-4 minutes yesterday. It pulled 7.0 amps in high.
This is excellent news because it means that it lines up with the output test djozz posted in his thread where he crash tested an MT-G2. It also backs up my measurements of the light in my lumens pipe. On totally fresh batteries the emitter should be seeing about 7-8 amps and putting out around 3500-3600 lumens. With losses in the head the 3025 lumens I’m seeing at 30 seconds seems spot on.
hmm. my batteries have maybe 10 to 15 minutes total of run time, probably half that on high. i will fully charge them and try again. only other thing i can think is maybe the fact i put thermal compound on the threads of the brass pill. the top shoulder still has good contact on the body though. like i said, the light seems as bright as it should be.
also just cleaned the compound off threads and retested without charging batteries and got around 5a still
Could be dropping a fair but of power in the DMM resistor compared to my wire shunt. Mine reads lower when measured with my DMM in the circuit.
I’m getting around 6.5A at the tail with 26650 IMR cells, measured with my Fluke and reasonable thick wires.
Same setup as OP 
Sounds like we are both in the same ballpark. Were you using the same type of batteries we are? I’m mildly curious what 2 high discharge cells would do in these lights.
I did see that you used 2x 26650 IMR’s, just not which.
I’m using these Vappower batteries http://www.banggood.com/VAPPOWER-26650-5200mAh-20A-3_7V-Li-Ion-Rechargeable-Battery-p-951875.html
Tested with a thick wire and current clamp meter now and got about the same, voltage was at 8.14V though so I guess there is a bit more with topped off cells.
That or its possible that the fairly new King Kong 4000mah batteries I’m using just have a bit lower internal resistance, and are able to deliver a bit more power. Any idea what the resistance difference is between solder blobs vs button tops? Could be something weird like that I suppose, since mine are de-protected and have big solder blobs acting as my buttons.
Anybody’s guess unless we measure them all with the same piece of equipment and the same batteries on the same day.