Built my second S2+ triple yesterday. Headline specs:
Desert Tan S2+ Host
Triple Luxeon V 4000K on Led4Power MCPCB with MOSFET and NTC
LED4Power B4 driver
Carclo 10507 TIR optic
Kiriba-ru copper spacer
Both springs bypassed with 20AWG silicone wire
LG HG2 battery
My Nichia 219C triple (in the copper host in the photo) is the first torch I built from scratch, i.e. with a host and collecting all the parts together. I love it, and it’s a ridiculous little hot rod. But I felt I could go even further, so after some browsing of led4power.com’s site and these forums I saw that the Luxeon V seems like a very efficient and high-power emitter. I’m a huge fan of the S2+ so I decided my next build would be a Luxeon V triple.
The results are quite amazing. It is both brighter and throwier than my 219C triple, as you can see in the photos (same camera settings for the outdoor comparison shots, including the hilariously grainy high ISO setting that I didn’t notice on Lightroom Mobile!). I measured 19A with my clamp meter which is roughly the same as my 219C triple, but according to the tests posted here, a Luxeon V at 6 amps is 2000 lumens! I’m not sure if that really equates to 6K of real-life light output with three of them, but it is very impressive nonetheless.
I used the L4P B4 driver and their triple Luxeon V MCPCB with external MOSFET and temp sensor. This means 5 wires to the MCPCB rather than just 2 which made for some fiddly soldering, but it allows for much quicker, more granular temperature control, and more efficient heat dissipation thanks to the external FET. It’s quite a sophisticated little build and it works really well. You can set the temperature stepdown threshold wherever you please with the L4P driver, so I increased it a bit since the stock 65C was quite tame
All in all, I’m extremely impressed with this build and the quality of L4P’s hardware. But… I’m wondering if I can go even better and brighter with the S2+ host…. What say you all?