Well guys, about my most lame mod ever… I have been having eye problems and could not see to mod. Don’t know if I will ever get back to building my own drivers or not.
I have been on a kick with AA/14500 lights lately, not much out there with a decent driver. Now, I love the P60 modules for testing new emitters and drivers, way back in my P60 bin I had a Solarforce .8-4.2V XP-G R5 dropin. As you could guess, from Solarforce a very low drive current, crappy CW emitter. But, 3 decently space modes!
To me, this was almost no use because of the existing emitter. Given that high mode on 14500 is only about .9 amps, I decided to use something with a fairly low Vf… this required Nichia of course. I have them all from sw-30, sw-40, sw-45, sw-45k and sometimes multiple bins, my favorite emitter, But, my eyes… so I found that I had 2 sw-40 D200 already on Noctigons… Swapped out the nasty XP-G, wire soldering was bad enough. But now I have a very low voltage dropin that I swear now has a bit more output and makes my eyes happy.
The copper tape on the dropin is cut and folded back on itself to all for a better fit in the FiveMega 18500 tube. It was not making reliable contact without it. Someone told me there is a fitment ring made that drops in on top of the dropin, under the retainer that would likely fix that issue. According to FM the tube is SolarForce parts compatible, that switch and one other are the only 2 that I had that would screw on the tube. I was really bummed by that as I really want this to tail stand as it is a SHTF light for me. Overall, I am fairly happy with the final product.
I have Convoy low voltage drivers on the way, if they ever get here… I will test them in a shell, they will take more work as they are springless, I will either cut as solder a longer brass pin on the driver or see if the old AK springs will fit and find a longer version of them for the driver. But, the Convoy driver is 4 mode and a bit higher current draw. A good while back I built a dropin based on the Jaxman M2 driver for 2xAA operation and I am reasonably happy with it as well.
On an interesting side note, I compared all of my ECD 4000k lights in low modes to this dropin… Most look sick! I have lights with 2 bins of SST-20, 2 bins of Lh351D and with XP-L 5A3 and 5D2. Of all of them, the 5D2 was about a perfect tint match, but much lower CRI. All of the SST’s and one of my LH351D’s looked down right yellow green next to this emitter.
Anyone have an extra one of this dropin? I would really like one more, not sure why I only bought one at the time. I guess I figured SolarForce would be around forever.
!!
!!