Not a typo. They’re just dim, as described. These things are usually difficult to see in beam shots or during real-world use. It’s easiest to see when shining at a white wall, especially while rotating the light along its Z axis to spin the petals around the hotspot.
Virtually all flashlights have some degree of flower-petal shape if they have a square emitter in a round smooth reflector, but the degree varies quite a bit. It’s most noticeable when the square is relatively large compared to the reflector… and can be decreased by using a larger reflector, a smaller emitter, or by moving the reflector out of focus.
The D1’s petals are a sign that it’s well-focused, and the faint-ness of the petals suggest its proportions are well-balanced. The D1S seems to have some petals too, but they’re smaller due to the more dramatic ratio of reflector-to-emitter size, and they’re pretty much hidden in the corona. Also, I’ve had a difficult time getting the focus perfect on my D1S, so the petals are outweighed by the slight defocusing. I’ll fix that after I take it apart for reflashing, which will probably happen after I’ve got the firmware ready for production.
Thank you for the explanation!
I searched for petals on my lamps, it turned out I have only TIR or orange peel lamps. No smooth reflectors in da house.
I was curious about the D1S runtime, so I’ve been playing around with zak’s ceiling bounce app in my NIST-certified integrating bedroom closet. Even set to a very high thermal limit, the D1S throttles down pretty hard after about 5-7 minutes and takes more than 20 minutes longer to settle at a stable output level. With a lower limit, or a higher drain cell like the VTC6 (“d1s test”), the “hump” is even more pronounced. I will repeat the tests with a proper shoebox setup soon, but I was surprised the D1S couldn’t handle a bit more since I almost exclusively use it outside where it’s cool enough the thermal throttling never engages.
In contrast, the D1 also drops down, but manages to stabilize fairly quickly.
Can someone who has both a D1S and a decent pair of calipers give me an idea of the overall diameter of the head? I’ll see if I can get a chunk of Tellurium copper to beat my D1S home…
I always get ahead of myself… in the beginning of this thread the 35mm diameter is quoted… so I ordered a piece of TeCu 38.2mm in diameter by 76.3mm in length. Tonight was the last night of a nice discount, so I hurried.
It’ll be all right though, I want to start the copper just above where the emitter shelf is so I can cut threads and inset the new emitter shelf.
Ah, I see what I did…. I got the 35mm bezel diameter of the D1… oh well, I’ll make it work, just need the diameter where the emitter shelf is and that should be around 36mm at best guess, 38.2 will have to do.
And no, I’m not planning on using the entire 3” on this light, I have some other things needing this copper.
Oh, I’ve got a D1, and a D4 (or two) and the grey D1S should be here someday. And then I’ll probably make it look something like this, albeit a bit less disjointed…
Joe, I was referring to the smooth mirror finished reflector cups in the Q8. The flat sides of the XP-L are due to the fact that the die is XM-L sized on an XP substrate, so the dome had to be flat sided to fit. These flat sides cause 4 “petals” in the beam profile of a mirror finished reflector. It’s a reflection of the emitter in the shiny coating.
Go ahead…… twist the knife, will soon be a month since I ordered from Neal and shipping only says “has been processed through a facility in China” :disappointed:
I know its not Neal’s fault but it would be nice to have better updates from the shipping………… like “its on the boat” ……. surely they dont use air freight or it would already be here.
My overseas packages are almost always 13-15 days. My D1S was delivered in14 days. It was 9 days between “has been processed through a facility in China” to “Processed Through Facility
ISC LOS ANGELES CA”
