Are you asking me to compare my TA Lumen Tube to yours? Do you suspect your tube is reading a bit high?
I adjusted my TA Tube to make it read consistently to my Maukka calibration light. I had to reduce my output by more than 32. I had to reduce it by 39.
Your lumen reading is about 12% higher than mine (well within tolerance of the stock TA Tube). It would be best to also compare the amp draws and the candela. If your also drawing 5.5A and had 148kcd, then your tube might be reading a bit high (compared to mine).
If your drawing 6A and get 155kcd, then your lumen numbers might be about the same as mine, your just getting higher output from the light.
I see you just ordered a calibration light from Maukka. Have you received it yet?
This is very easy to do. Most folks on the forum prefer using the Uni-T UT210E meter. There was a group buy as well as coupons a while back. It’s usually around 30 bucks. You can take off a lights tail cap and connect the battery with a loop of wire to the battery tube. Then clamp the meter to the wire. The light works normally and you can measure the amperage. This is how you would estimate output if you didn’t have an integrating sphere.
I have just experienced that kind of behavior from a Sofirn C8T: in low and medium mode, the tint is NW, when set to Highest brightness mode, the tint changes to cool-bluish tint, and there’s smoke swirling inside the reflector… I reported the issue to Sofirn and sent a lot of pictures (even asked me to put more thermal paste beneath the LED board, which I did, but it didn’t solve the problem.) Fortunately, Sofirn send me a replacement LED+board, which I’ve installed on the Sofirn C8T, and now it works properly (no tint shift when changing from medium-to-high modes and no “smoke swirl” in High mode.
I think the issue is the LED is not ‘baked’ properly into the LED board (which I don’t know nor have the equipment and skills to correct that), so the LED gets hot and becomes bluish (purplish in your case) — at least that’s how I understand the issue to be…
When opening the bezel of my GT (in the process of checking a faulty driver switch) the led was sheared off the board by transfer of the twisting action to the reflector and centerpiece. This may or may not be related to what happened to you. Shearing off a led has not happened to me before so it could be that Lumintops reflows are on the edge of not hot enough or too little flux, resulting in insufficient solder joints that apart from being weak may also not transfer the heat well enough.
Mine is a 17”round sphere, calibrated using maukka lights, using a drmeter. It’s got two baffles preventing direct exposure on the meter’s sensor. Using an HS1010a at 20’ for the candlela.
Same exact measuring setup reads 2008 start lumens (1886 at 30s) on the catapult v6, with 174kcd.
Also took a hotspot pic at 4 feet. Both on low settings. GT mini is NW, v6 is CW.
edit: just bypassed the driver spring with 20ga and got 1195 at start and 1081 at 30s. Also stretched the spring out a little and about 2 coils had been soldered together at the board side. Spring popped right out and gave about 7mm of height, compared to about 4mm out of the box.
nkresho, wondering about how you figure your lux reading… if you do it at 20’ what is the math on that? I ask because I was told to use EXACTLY 5M (or 10M or 15M or more, I’ve done up to 50M), then multiply the meter reading by 5 squared (25) to get the lux reading. So if it’s a multiplier of the distance squared, what do you use as a multiplier x meter reading? (just checking to see how you derived that lux number) 5M of course is 16.4’. It would help if we all used a standard distance, but of course throwers actually need some space to get the beam focused properly if they’re any good at being throwers, so a 5M reading may be cutting the lux short.
What is the 0.09290304 number? Not sure why the two lights, at different distances and power levels, would have a same multiplier…
Ok, say you’re at 16’ 4.8” distance (5M) and you shine a light at the meter which reads 10,000. You’d multiply 10,000 x 25 for 250,000 as a lux reading (250Kcd) and then take the square root of 250,000x4 for throw. (1000M throw)
Another light, weaker, shows 767 on the meter set at 10x, so 7670 x 25 = 191.75Kcd. Taking the square root of 191,750 x 4 you’d get 875.79M throw for this one. See? nowhere is there a same multiplier except for the distance squared (5M squared is 25)
I don’t know all this part well enough to understand why we’d have a different formula, which is why I’m asking. Trying to discover how we all get on the same page.
Woohoo!! Got mine in the mail last night just in time for some night work on a movable bridge. This GT-Mini is tiny… smaller in hand than expected. Slightly shorter than my Nitecore P30 (by 0.5 inches/12mm) but the head/bezel diameter is nearly the same…I put them face to face… but the head size of the GT Mini is smaller than the P30. Just got to get used to the side switch on this little bad boy (I’m used to the dual-switch on the P30- Tail for on/off with tactical momentary-on and side switch for mode/levels).
Most likely mentioned before but UI is similar or same as BLF Q8.
The only bad thing I have to say about it is that this is a minor dimple in the reflector 10:30 o’clock position (looking at LED with switch at 12 o’clock position) about halfway in between lens/bezel and LED. It doesn’t affect the output or quality of the beam but it is a minor defect. It is very noticeable because the rest of the reflector is near perfectly smooth (the lateral machine lines on the Nitecore P30 are way more noticeable). It sticks out like a sore thumb.
Is there a way to request a replacement reflector?
I wish I could see your pictures, but they are not showing up. Your sphere sounds a lot like the ones from Josh K. Is that what you have or is it just similar to it? Not the same at all.
Keep in mind that the Catapult V6 uses an xhp35 Hi which is a bigger LED than xpl Hi.
I’m guessing the 0.09290304 number is about converting feet to meters. Candela is always meters.
By far the easiest way to measure it is try to find 10 meters in your house. It doesn’t need to be completely dark or anything. Just subtract whatever the ambient light is from your total reading. I typically set my light down so that the emitter (not lens) is at the 10 meter mark from the sensor (meaning 1” from the wall). Then I turn on the light and walk over to the opposite wall and try to find the area of the hotspot that is brightest (I measure along a straight line between the center and the edge of hot spot). It can sometimes take 25 or 30 seconds, so I just kind of count that out in my head. Once you have the number at 10 meters the math becomes very easy. You take whatever that number is and multiply by 100 which is just adding two zeros to the end.
So my GT Mini was 1,480 lux. This is 148,000 candela at 1 meter. Easy math. My big GT was 10,560 @10m which is 1,056,000 cd. 10 meters is the way to go if you have the space.
Then to convert to distance is the regular X4 then square root.
Mine thrunite v6 measurement are similiar to nkresho. If that is true, mini gt cw have more lumen than nw … i was told mini gt cw led are high bin. anyone can verify ?
Lux to candela calculation with distance in feet
The luminous intensity Iv in candela (cd) is equal to 0.09290304 times the illuminance Ev in lux (lx),
times the square distance from the light source d2 in square feet (ft2):
Iv(cd) = 0.09290304 × Ev(lx) × (d(ft))2
Trying to discover how we all get on the same page.