Iām drawn to the idea of the SP33 as a host. At least I think I am. The T-shaped driver assembly might made things more challening than Iād hope. On the other hand, it seems like the stock driver is direct drive with fast PWM ā if only it had an AVR MCU to make custom firmware easier.
The SP33 looks like a tricky design to use as a host. I think the Supfire L5-S, like in my sig, has a definite advantage with its conventional 26mm driver. Especially when Lexel comes out with his boost driver. Then you could run a xhp 35, 50.2 or 70.2 with a single 26650 and have Narsil as well.
The SP33 has a nice looking side button and finish, but I wish it had a tail switch as well to act as a lock out.
Just today I received the c8f host I ordered from the sofirn aliexpress page. Very impressed by the quality. The fact that they offer paypal payment is a plus. Currently communicating with Lexel about a driver. My choice of nichia 219c may be lower output than some cree options but the 90+ cri will likely make it one of my favorites.
As I have suffered through a few of these C8F builds, here is some fast feedback for those cranking up their soldering stations:
1) take a drill bit (about a 3/16ā) and carefully move the switch wires to the side while going in from the rear (driver side)ā and ream out the wire holes from the back of the headās heat sink. My first build was a frickinā mess due to my 18g wires catching on the razor sharp edges left from Sofirnās manufacturing of the host. I ALSO lightly reamed the FRONT edge of these wire holes too. I wasted my MCPCB on build #1 because the LED wires kept catching on these sharp edges, causing me to rip off one of the wires from the MCPCB trace completelyā so making it unusable. I also pulled up the copper trace on the driver- but Lexel helped me with a second connect point (andā¦ THANKS again Lexel!)
2) The tail cap bi-pass is pretty thin from the factory. I replaced mine as it came off (or shorted?) within the first few days of use. Good idea, but not well done at the factory (several others have had this failure too). So just replace it when building and be done with it!
3) Donāt forget the little plastic washer (used as a spacer) between the reflector and hostās front faceā when you put that screw inā easy miss; and the face will not be square without it of course (how I figured it outā the hard way).
4) IF you use Lexelās tail switch (for gun use on a pressure switch)ā youāll have to reverse the tube after modding a clicky tail switch (which you can ask for from Sofirn, and until you get itā borrow off a C8A/F or C8S host kit as I did).
Hope these few tips help for C8F buildersā lots of these kits sold and they are very well madeā but every build is different and these were my challenges. Good luck!
Thanks for pointing out the MCPCB issue. Iāve been going around and around trying to find an inexpensive 26650 host for a reflector based SST-40 triple, Iād forgotten about that issue when I decided to just accept the battery size compromise.
I think Iāll probably end up cutting and drilling a copper sheet and gluing or soldering small individual XML MCPCBs to it.
I posted this in the WDYMT thread already, but has anyone else had the rotation-preventing screwhole in the reflector way off like this? It causes huge problems, had to ream the hole in the MCPCB and the cavity in the shelf to compensate for it, the build all of a sudden was not easy anymore thanks to a sloppy machinist.
(look at the bottom hole in the reflector on the right side of the picture. Already reamed the MCPCB, and because the hole is now in the trace area it was not easy to prevent internal horts to the core of the MCPCB)
I think that they should be aware of the extensive consequences of that hole being off, but Iām not going to ask a replacement part for a host that only costed me 13 dollar shipped from the other side of the world.