Even though I have ordered a bunch of hosts, drivers and emitters to build my own XM-L light I have a bad feeling that one of the small pieces might not fit (if they all arrive somehow, ordered them from 4 different sources) the combination at all and reordering process starts again.
I don't want to risk my XM-L pleasure with heat issues etc, so didn't think of getting a P60 drop in in the first place.
KD has two already built, non P60 XM-L flashlights 1x18650 C8 body and another one with 2x18650. Anybody ordered one of these two and received? (EDIT: Apparently some of us already have theirs on the way)
I wonder very much how efficient would the drivers on these two be and if it is worth upgrading 1x18650 one with a 8x7135 + MCU driver sold on KD.
_ Must add:
The parts I collected are:
PROJECT1 : a TF1200 body from Lightake + T6 1C Emitter from EBAY or T5 1C from KD + 2x18650 3A 3 Modes Buck Driver from KD + MCE Aluminum Reflector from DX (I guess I'll have some problems with this reflector since it doesn't seem to have springs)
PROJECT2 : a Silver C8 with Q5 on it from KD + T6 1C Emitter from EBAY or T5 1C from KD + 8x7135 + MCU driver from KD
Yes, it seems to be heat rather than battery voltage droop, at least up to 3A from an 18650. If you take the M bin MC-E in a Solarforce L2m body, it starts at 3240 lux which has dropped to 2720 lux by two minutes, a drop of 16%.
The XM-L dropin starts at 3160 lux and drops to 2990 lux at two minutes, a 5% drop. Both were tested in the same body, heavily wrapped in foil to make the dropin a tight fit that gets forced into place by the head.
It is quite possible they are using the same drivers for both.
The XM-L draws 2600mA on high so it probably isn't getting the full 3A it is rated for.
Lambda has run one (on a large copper heatsink) at 4A for hours on end.
I got my XM-L drop-in today. Has very well-functioning memory: If the light is off for more than 2 seconds, it will remember the last mode. Modes are H-M-L-Strobe-SOS. The bottom of the driver says "sheng guong" on it. I was reading a draw of 2.2 amps, but I don't trust my ampmeter. Like Don's, the LED is a little off-center. Definitely more light than my XP-G R5 lights, but it isn't dark yet, so we'll have to see. I'll work up a full review this weekend.
I like what i hear! 2.2-2.7 amp for the p60 dropin aint bad! I hope it can sustain the heat in the long run say around 1h on a single cell. Doable if current drops steadily on a good cell. Got a few ex WOW now Hi-max that are pretty decent!
Have a bunch of XTAR 2400mAh protected 18700 ive been pleased with too. I'f i had a good way to review those i would make a review. Not expensive and very well made and perhaps also a very accurate capacity.
Also judging from the pictures the color temperature should be around 5500K is it true by eye-o-meter?
As far as my experience goes the tint likes going to blueish when heavily overdriven or/and very hot. True with Q3, Q5 and P4 emitter i tested. Can't say for the rest.
I had a TR-801 Q5 with a bad driver that pulled around 1,89A at tailcap. Can't say how much current and voltage reached the emitter but the blue tint was really clear day sky blue. With a decent driver the tint went to a normal.
At 1A it is more likely up to 7000K, at 1,5+A were 8500+K. Heat wise almost double.
I think the tint is pretty consistent until the LED is overdriven and starts to go blue. I don't notice any difference in tint between Low and High on any of my lights.
I believe my search for the brightest flashlight will calm down one day. I could maybe use these leds in softboxes to make artificial light for macro photography then.
My one I'd put on the faintly yellow-greenish side of neutral - it looked beautifully vanilla under the very blue office lighting. In a blacked out room
After a look at the CIE curve I'd put it at 4800-5500K, probably to the lower end of that. But I've not colour calibrated this display so I may well be misreading the curve which is very hard to extrapolate from anyway.
I'd guess at the 3A-3B, 2C-2D tint bin range if I were forced to. More likely 2C or 2D
Here is a picture so you can see the relative size of the MC-E, XM-L, and XP-G. The XP-G looks pretty tiny compared to the XM-L, but the XM-L is definitely more compact than the MC-E (click on the image for a bigger version).
Got mine today also and all i can say is AWSOME i'm very pleased with the light, all i want now is one with a 8v driver so i can use it in my L2x extended :-)
Just stuck it on the lightbox to see how it fared after around an hour on high - it was quite hot but that was probably because it has been sitting on top of the vents of this machine's monitor. I got 2720 lux / 488 lumens. Will check cell voltage and current draw now 1716mA and 3.727V. So it is good for around an hour on high on a "2500mAh" unprotected Trustfire cell.
With the light still hot from previous cell I got 3750 lux out of it on a freshly charged "2500mAh" unprotected Trustfire cell. Will do lux readings at 5-minute intervals to see what happens.
These cells are a couple of years old and have quite a few cycles on them - you might well get better performance from newer or better cells. The foil trick in the L2m certainly works well - the whole light is hot.
Did I say how much i dislike the Solarforce forward clicky - IMO forward clickies have no place in multimode lights. And my one feels horrible anyway, mushy and generally nasty. The "tactical" reverse clicky it came with is a much better switch but is prone to unexpected operation. But since the old Wf-504B/Uniquefire L2 tailcap fits and works well, this isn't really a problem.
But Excel is driving me insane. As @^%&^**%&^ ever, Microsoft think they know better than I do what I want. The bottom values reading 1-7 should read 0,5,10,15,20,25,30 but Excel in its infinite arrogance has decided I can't have that as I'm clearly too stupid to know what I want. This is what I hate about every single piece of Microsoft's garbage is has been my bad luck to encounter. This point is close to trying to get XP Home remember wireless settings when it just knows you don't really want it to work so it changes the settings back to "broken". They always try too hard to be clever and fail miserably.
