Ever once in a while, a leading manufacturer gets it. They listen. Sometimes they even do it without a bunch of hoopla or fanfare. Nitecore is one of those companies. They have been quietly listening in the background and then they put it to work.
And when I see this, inside a light, I get it. And I put it back together and leave it alone.
Cree XHP-70 on a proprietary strip of copper, soldered to a thick copper threaded heat sink and powered by 14ga wires. WoooooHoooo! The copper sink looks to be about a quarter inch thick. Love it!
My Efest 3500 18650 is a success, 3129.15 lumens with as much run time as can be had from a single 18650 cell. Booya!
I bought a Nitecore TM03 proprietary cell while waiting for the TM03 to arrive. With all the speculation I just had to unwrap it and see what they did to make it proprietary. There is a circuit board they put on top of the cell, a Panasonic PF, that has a ground ring around the button top. The ground ring has two copper strips running the length of the cell and welded to the bottom of the cell. Then there is a metal disc with yet another copper strip on top of an insulation disc (cardboard) at the end of the cell covering the previous two copper strips. This last ground strip comes back up to the circuit board on top, soldered to the board independent of the main ground leads.
Removing all this from the PF cell I soldered it onto a new Efest 3500mAh dark purple cell that is rated as 10A continuous, 20A pulse, or essentially slightly better current capability than the PF cell and some 600mAh more capacity (PF is 2900mAh) Then I rewrapped the combination with covers given with cell purchases from IMRbatteries.com in Houston. Works just like the factory cell but with a better cell inside.
(I’ll use the PF cell elsewhere.)
I intended to see what could be done about bypassing this proprietary set-up and allowing use of a normal cell, but when I saw how well made the light was inside I simply put it back together. Probably later I’ll remove the insides and figure out what to do to use normal cells. I don’t really worry about having the protection circuit and that’s mainly all that circuit board adds.
I should have checked to see if that white goo in the threads of the copper sink is thermal paste or adhesive, but I didn’t. Of course I have that to do, right? lol
By chance, did you measure lumens on strobe mode stock form? I’m impressed with the stock nitecore battery. So a efest cell only gave less than a 100 lumen gain.
I don’t measure strobe because it’s always going to be wrong. The meter will try to average the output and show a much lower number than what the actual flash was.
The Efest cell gave a little boost but 600mAh capacity, which was the point. I could have used a 3000mAh cell for more lumens but chose capacity over output.
I’ll try the stock cell with strobe and see what it says, I don’t put much faith in it’s accuracy though. (Let’s face it, on most of our direct drivers the light is pulsed with PWM using full Turbo power to create a low mode, we only see low output, right? The pulse is full Turbo power, which is why this DD isn’t considered efficient.)
As usual, strobe showed a wildly fluctuating meter reading with the highest number I saw at 486 lumens. This only means that the combination of off time and on time averaged 486 lumens, like a PWM mode.
short time momentary light is a quite unfair assessment. Where’d the 30 hours low mode go? The medium mode is no slouch either. Based on my calculation, it’s putting out more than 700 lumens, and at 2 hours mark it’s still putting out way more than 50% light
Picture this… sound asleep, 3AM, something bumps inside the house and you wake up, eyes wide open! Slight rustling sounds approach, you grab the TM-03 from the bedside table and even as you flick it on in Turbo a prowler dressed in all black peeps around the door jamb. BAM! 3100 lumens in his dark adjusted eyes! He’s busted! You hear crashing noises as he makes his flight out the way he came and dogs bark in the neighborhood as he tears away. Couple of seconds of high output at your fingertips and a bad scene averted. Now, what are you gonna do with the other 9 minutes and 57 seconds of Turbo? Worth chasing him, ain’t it?
The wife stirs… what’s going on honey? Oh nothing dear, go back to sleep, I’m taking the Tiny Monster out for a walk….
I probably should have phrased it better. its run times on the lower modes are good, its just referring to the higher modes. its indeed a great light, but as we know how much extra drain on cells it is to boost voltages up to the requirements of 6 volt emitters like the XHP70 takes. seeing the light has a larger head than the body, if it were designed with a larger body to accept 26650 cells along with 18650 would increase the run times a bit more. Probably due to i am used to needing hours of run times for the jobs i use them for with good outputs.
Since the disc around the positive is ground, would it be possible to make it work on turbo with a normal cell by shorting the two negative contacts on the head? The one that connects the tube and the one that detects the battery.
Btw Dale, how long is turbo before any visual drop?
I found that the battery tube/head is one piece, so to get access to those little ground flanges the copper heat sink has to be removed thus exposing the driver and contact board. Want to play with it some before I do all that, just in case, well, you know, I could forget how to put it back together or something.
Took the TM03 for a walk Thursday night, walking the trash down to the road for pick-up. When I set out I started to use High mode then realized it would be a decent test for Turbo as it’s about a 10 minute walk. Well, within the first 3 minutes the head was getting quite hot, really too hot to hold with fingers on the finned area but ok if backing off. I kept it on Turbo the entire trip down there and back (it’s about half a mile round trip) I stopped and shined it on the barn 600 yds away, searched the fields for rabbits or foxes or whatever, and all in all it worked pretty well. By about 6 or 7 minutes the head was no longer scorching hot but still very warm to almost hot (my fingers, all the soldering and what not, can’t be sure it wouldn’t have been burning someone else ya know? Like, I hold wires in my fingers when I solder leads onto drivers…)
I am pretty sure it dimmed down with cell voltage loss but I never saw it “step down” at all. So if it purposely dimmed I didn’t notice it. The hot spot coverage is large, ample spill, really decent light to go walking with but not much of a spot or search light.
When I got inside the cell measured 3.89V. This was the factory one with the 2900mAh PF cell inside.
I can only reason by this that the High level would have easily run considerably longer without as much of the heat issue. I’m a little more impressed with it now on the beam and output production, really like it’s build overall and quality.
Winner, but I’m still much more in favor of the smaller throwier MH20GT.
I sourced a Nitecore TM03 for my brother to take overseas. It included the battery, O-ring, Holster, Warranty card, & User Manual (english). But no pocket clip.
Btw, I have noticed that often Nitecore lights sourced from China as soon as they are released, don't include a User Manual or include one in Chinese.
I got a brown box with a Nitecore yellow label on it, picturing the TM03 with a pocket clip. Inside was a fitted foam insert that held the light. Nothing else. No extra o-ring, no papers zip. I removed the foam insert and nothing under it in the box. Seems weird, never seen a Nitecore come without all the accessory stuff like what you got.
Sorry, I did get the holster. The battery was inside the light.
Slightly smaller lights like the MH20GT and PC12GT have come in a yellow box with a hanging top for putting on a display rack (as did the Caveman and EC4), with all the paperwork and stuff. I got the TM36Lite in a big brown box labeled similarly, it didn’t come with a pocket clip either.
Worth chasing him, ain’t it? 
