I have one from long agao that serverd me really well. Not Fluke granted but probes aren't the cheapest available. I tried sticking decent gauge wire directly to test the difference. It was in the margin of error. Granted never tried anything above 1,4A untill today.
The cell was an unprotected sony 18650 i scavenged from a almost new laptop. The laptop was left at the shop when we told the guy it is beyond repair. (The laptop was thrown out of the window of a running truck). The reasony why is still unknown to me. I did thank him for the cells with a coffee tho.
Top off the cell again and test with the other meters. Same cell and same leads which are better than most.
Peak Tech 4390 1
Cell voltage 4.223V, the Fluke says 4.20. But then both of the Peak Tech meters say around 400mV DC with nothing connected.
2808mA High
1040mA Medium
105mA Low
Peak Tech 4390 2
Cell Voltage 4.223, the Fluke again says 4.20
2727mA High
1030mA Medium
107mA Low
No-name multimeter I've had for 20 years. It wasn't the cheapest, but was about 15% of the cost of a comparable Fluke at the time.
Cell Voltage 4.21 The Fluke says 4.21
2830mA High
1080mA Medium
110mA Low.
Since I happen to have some 2.5mm2 solid copper cable here, time to make up some nice heavy leads then try again. Now where have I put the wire cutters?
KD dropin. Usual test range which is less reflective than it was last week.
Dragged out the UF-H3 and the M-bin MC-E as well.
Same exposure for each, freshly charged cells for each, the tree is still 50 feet away.
And, just for fun, the assistant with her present. Which she has since buried somewhere, though it may have been nicked by Maggie, the visiting greyhound who retired from racing this summer. In her last race she averaged 43mph (About 70km/h). Quite a bit faster than the assistant...
Control
Because it was in my pocket, the Ultrafire UF-H3 - the exposure was set for brighter lights.
I like it, i may do a review one of these days. I have torubles to see the hostspot it is really a good floodlight with lots of light. I wish mine came with a SMO reflector. But for my intended use in the few nestdays its perfect as it is.
Butt , I just took a second look at it , and it seems the Driver was very poorly soldered on , and there must have been a very small [ read tiny ] solder bridge that burned out when the light was turned on ... I just rechecked and when I put the batt to the neg part of the driver , it came alive ...
So just very poor soldering , so now my soldering iron is warming up , and I will solder the driver in correctly ..
So looks like it works fine .... [ At least I hope it will ] . So looks like I will be able to compare KD XM-L to my DIY ones ...
I got my XM-L from the CPF group buy on the 2nd. I decided to swap the emitter out of my 2x18650 Ultrafire MCU WF-1200L. It has a P7 and has always suffered from a greenish tint and a donut hole. If I had thought of this originally I would have gotten the LED on a 20mm star instead of 14, but my original plan was just to build a P60 drop-in. Then I was a afraid the P7 would be epoxied into place (this light has always had great heat sinking, but the pill also screws into the throat of the light), but it was just some kind of compound. It was easy enough to unsolder the leads on the LED and pry it up without damaging it. Then I glued the XM-L into place.
Really nice! The tint is a little green, but not as green as the P7 was. And the hotspot seems tighter and brighter (no donut hole!), probably because the XM-L is a good bit smaller. My Fujik adhesive doesn't seem to be doing a great job of being sticky, but the reflector bears down on it a little, keeping it in place. I'm hoping it will set up eventually.
If the coated lenses for my P60's turn out well, I might have to upgrade this light with a coated lens as well, even though the 52mm lenses are more than twice as much.
The XM-L dye is 5 stripes as opposed to MCE and p7 which has 4 emitters crammed in one spot. That's why no donut effect. Simlar to XP-G R5 but 1 stripe more and slightly bigger.
Ok. I may be weird but here's what I want someone to make in the next year. I would like a p-60 dropin that would work from 3.7-18v with 5 levels @ 7.2v. 2600mA 1000mA 500mA 100mA and 50mA. With memory. No strobe, no SOS.