I finally managed to twist’n’pull hard enough to get the pill out of the “Thorfire” CT01s. Will see if I can’t scare up a moderate-current driver and nicer LED to replace the hateful little ones inside the light now.
Hardware-wise, it doesn’t look too bad, but the evil blue/purple beam and craptastic driver definitely need purging.
Will see what I got in “inventory” that I can stick in there…
A-ha! #1 has a tailcap driver with a momentary. That’s how there’s a battery indicator in the boot.
The driver looks similar to the on the Ultrafire zoomie has, with a few minor differences. In the head there’s a 50 ohm resistor to the body, but 220 work too.
The thermal path in the head is bad. The LED sits on a pill that’s sandwiched between reflector and body, otherwise freely slides in the head with ~0.2mm clearance to the walls.
I managed to press it in with some copper shim stock, it should be a lot better now.
I need to wrap my head around the driver, maybe there’s a way to get something like Anduril running in this thing.
The XM-L2 clone went out, a 5000k 90+ LH351D went in.
Driver:
has fewer surprises. I does have a LED shelf, ~3mm thick, it’s press-fit and not as bad as I thought.
Quite long (129mm), the reflector is pretty deep (22mm dia x 20mm).
The USB tailcap is a stacked construction and probably uses a 4056 charging controller. I have to do measurements yet, I expect charge termination voltage to be a bit on the low side due to the diode solution.
This one got a 4000k 85CRI LH351C instead of the angry blue XM-L clone.
Next-mode memory and strobe+SOS, of course. Otherwise this would be quite okay for under 4 dollars.
TC:
Driver (with the diodes + fuse that allow TC charging):
Well, now that I have a couple XHP50.2 3V LED's on order from Cutter, one is definitely going into the IRA. 16 amps in this light? No problem at all...
I checked that. It shows up in 2 different pictures from different angles. It definitely looks frosted.
See below.
Hmmm, hang on. This kinda looks like the same picture, just rotated 75°. I bet it is just the really deep bezel shroud making a reflection. Notice the 6 points of the bezel and the 6 sides on the lens? I bet it’s not frosted.
And some type of larger driver heatsink fin reflector C8 design, looks like kiriba-ru’s heatsink head but w/ reflector, using those uncoated Nightwatch springs:
I’m not sure, at the wall it looks like a round spot but the beam itself seems to have spill. Other beamshots clearly show lights with lenses. But 1 clearly shows another light and the others don’t show the light at all.
Anyone seen zoomie host in Sofirn SF30A style but made for 18650 bat only?
I need to find suitable host with smaller glass lenses, 1x18650 tube,anodized threads…
Sofirn SF30A would do but body is to wide for 25,4mm WE adjustable mount