I think it is throwier too. I hoped the XPL-HI would be more efficient so if the tint would have been perfect this was a good idea. I may go for the SST-20 as next led in this light but perfect would be a led with 1x1mm die just as the original XR-E.
contactcr, 1.09A on an 14500 cell freshly charged. So it’s the stock driver, 4 modes. (Click on, click to shift modes L-H, hold to turn off) Still works with an AA Alkaline.
tint p#rn alert, this post is not suitable for viewers with any sense of practicality
Yesterday evening I hit the tint jackpot.
A few days ago I modded my classic Romisen RC-G2 with a 90CRI 3000K XP-L-HI from Kaidomain, and although the colour temperature and CRI were according to specs, the tint was above the BBL and rather yellow/greenish compared to i.e. the SST-20-W 3000K 95CRI. On top of that I liked the beam less floody, the old XR-E in the RC-G2 was way throwier and I wanted that back.
(some info on the mod one page back in this thread: What did you mod today? - #6377 by djozz )
So after slicing 4000K 90CRI Samsung LH351D with very good tint results before, I had a go at slicing the SST-20-W 4000K 95CRI, to get the throwy beam that I wanted in the RC-G2 and hopefully a good tint on top. I managed to do the slice very close to the bond wires, as low as it can go, and then built the led into the flashlight. It looks in the picture that there is a burnt part in the phosfor, but this is a fresh led that had had no more than 50mA current when the picture was taken.
And indeed I got my very good tinted throwy beam, no rings, no visible tint shifts, no green or too yellow but rosy, very nice! Here’s the beam on the white wall from 2.5 meters, phone cam on daylight setting.
It has a Blue spring at the tail now and a raised brass post at the driver side, so resitances are low. The driver is a bistro driver that I set on 3 levels plus moon, on the Vapcell 14500 I get 0.14 lumen, 3 lumen/15mA, 98 lumen/620mA, 410 lumen/4.65A. The efficiency is very low, 40lm/W for the low levels, just 25 lumen/W for the highest setting (which is just twice the efficiency of a halogen bulb )
I could see that the tint was nice, but then I measured the tints of the hotspot and found how good they actually were:
Highest 410 lumen setting, pretty good CRI, tint on the rosy side:
Medium 98 lumen setting:
Low 3 lumen setting. Not great output but look at the numbers
It will not win any efficiency award but the trusty rusty RC-G2 has gotten a worthy modification
told you that this is for a selected group of tint weirdo’s
(high CRI tint pics are never look like reality, they tend to look brownish while it looks way whiter in real life)
hahahahaha, I don’t like cool tints, per se, just really don’t like orange or brown light. Campfire girls or whatever. They can use it to cook their s-mores…
djozz that’s very good info. Amazing how much DUV drops with a tint slice on the SST-20 instead of going up like on the Crees. Too bad the efficiency is so poor.
I’m a bit surprised about the efficiency loss actually, compared to an undomed bare led I would expect 20% loss for dedoming and 20% cfrom building into a flashlight, assuming about 4A with tail on (I measured 4.65A with a clamp meter bypassing the clicky tail), that should be 550 lumen. I see that some light leaks to the side, but in a reflector build like this even most of that light should end up OTF.