Haikelite MT40
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/67254
And the Aliexpress Haikelite store with CSLPM1 LED's:
Anybody else with an L21B SFT40 and take throw measurements? I’m seeing a max of ~310kcd. I had to raise the reflector a bit too. This got me 5-10kcd and the corona is smaller / hotspot larger. Out of the box I think 297,000 turn on was what I measured.
Going to try and bump the current up a bit and see if there is any more to be had from this thing. Still a great lightweight moderate lumen thrower, but 25% lower than spec is frustrating and a let down.
The L21B’s reflector height was a mess from the start, Simon was extremely disappointed. The only reason he went on to sell them was me informing him that the reflector just needed to be raised. New gaskets were made for the Osram chips, but still needs adjusting. The L21B with SFT40 needs raising a little too as you had noticed.
The L21B was designed for me as a mounted rifle light for use with only the Osram chips. I’m currently building my own gaskets and working with Simon to get everything sorted.
One thing to note is that not everyone wants a tightly fine tuned hotspot, this has already been reviewed by a few people including 1lumen as having an excellent beam. Entirely depends what each individual’s preference is though. If it’s going on a gun I like a tight beam, if it’s used as a search light, I love the spill in the corona to light up a paddock when searching for animals.
I just received the L21A and C8+ with SFT40 and get the following
L21A stock gasket - 1,167m
L21A custom gasket - 1,248m
C8+ - 819m
Measured at 20m
I was going to ask Simon to adjust the gasket for that 1,248m, but searching for animals it provides a nice bright corona spill for more coverage. My custom gasket creates a sharp edge, similar to the 4X18A SBT90.2. It’s precisely focused, but thought it was too narrow for the purpose I’m selling it for. Back it off slightly and it would have a corona, but for less than 100m gain it’s not really worth the hassle. The L21B on the other hand could be worse off, I’ll test this tomorrow
Thanks for the feedback Funtastic.
Are those lights using the ramping driver?
The C8+ is using the ramping driver, the L21A is using the 8A buck driver.
L21A - 1980 lumens at 30 sec
C8+ - 1920
That buck driver holds a steady level for awhile which is nice, the ramping driver drops down on Turbo continuously. The SFT40 replaces the SST40, I’m selling off all my stock for the SFT04 now, very impressed.
For the record, all that I expect from this reflector is 365kcd at peak output. Running 8A instead of 10A will cut this down to about 345kcd.
In meters that works out to 1210m and 1175m respectively.
I installed an SFT40 into an L21B and get 372,800 cd with my gasket. I’ll just tell everyone here, no need to pm me, but thanks.
I increased the height by 0.7mm. This L21B could do with 0.4mm I reckon. I’ll make some more tomorrow
Well, just a correction to my reply earlier. My gasket is too high currently, needs a little shaved off for the L21A. The high measurement of 1,248m was just winding out the bezel, my gasket looks just slightly out which resulted in 1,230m, not much to it. Can’t remember what the candela was now.
Jared - what did you do/use to raise the reflector? I’d like to experiment with mine as well.
I personally sand down a second gasket and glue it to the other one, fiddly but works well
So far I’ve only experimented quickly with unscrewing the bezel and tuning it maglite style. The plan is to punch out round discs of aluminum tape to build up the mcpcb around the emitter. Thinner tape for fine tuning after that or sanding the spacer.
It looks like yours is underperforming. I measured with the stock gasket at 20m and got 365kcd
I know that measuring a thrower like this at 9m it’s roughly 100m less
To check my lux meter I compared it to the 1Lumen review of the Maxtoch L3K, I reviewed the same flashlight. I got 2,900m,1Lumen got over 2,700, which if their meter is correct then mine is 5% too high. That would still make it 346kcd
Not gonna read the 87 posts but IMHO L2 with Osram is best thrower.
Just curious, I tried to compare 2 units of the L21B with SFT40.
I notice one has a slightly smaller corona but a slightly larger hotspot,
whereas the other unit has a slightly larger corona but a slightly smaller hotspot.
(Tried to take picture of it, but my camera is unable to capture it properly; although this can be observed with the naked eye when I point the 2 units on the ceiling, at slightly lower brightness levels so it’s not too glaring)
Any idea, which one of them will have a farther beam distance? (hard to tell just by doing side-by-side naked eye observation)
Thus: is the one with the smaller hotspot more throwy or the one with the larger hotspot more throwy?
(conventional thinking indicates smaller hotspot likely a bit more throwy, but in this case, it seems that having a (just slightly) larger hotspot might result in slightly more throw = which seems to match what you stated)
If you get a running start you can throw the S2+ a good distance.
It’s less about the size of the hotspot, but rather minimizing the relative size of the corona. So the first one you mentioned likely throws farther but definitely is in better focus.
Swapped the sft40 from the L21B into another light. Now I’m running a Cree XPP and replaced the the R010 with two R056, so the current should be around 2.85A (will confirm later).
With the 30T @ 3.8V, I was seeing 305kcd. Cell is charging and I’ll get more measurements later.
I chose the small 1.1mm² emitter so that I could better characterize this reflector. With the SFT, I was seeing no meaningful change in lux values @ 5m when raising the reflector from ~0.5 to 0.9 mm. The emitter was being too forgiving to nail the focus height… with the XPP, I think I perfected it. Using the stock 3535 9mm gasket (0.59mm) with a 3535 ‘butterfly’ gasket sanded lightly to 0.79mm, the corona has the sharpest ‘petals’ and highest center beam cd. The butterfly gasket also helps center the emitter since the convoy 3535 gasket is a bit loose around the emitter.
The XPP is 0.75mm tall, 4040 NM1 measured 0.80mm, SFT40 was 1.10mm.
The base of the reflector should then be 0.63 above the LES.
With the SFT40 and supplied 5050 9mm gasket which comes in at 1.06mm tall, then we should space up an additional 0.67mm.
I have some oval base 5050 gasket that is 0.66 thick, and by dumb luck, that’s what I tried first to space the reflector when I first started messing with it.
Hope this helps!
I tried mine, only got 57 meters, and the stupid thing broke when it landed. Tried my c8+ and got 62 meters and it broke too. All these people talking a thousand meters are full of it. Dont believe a word they say.
Just ordered the L21B with the W2 green. I’ll post some photos comparing it to the C8+ with a W1 green, and M21a with the W2 Green.
The focus needs adjusting by increasing the reflector height by 0.3mm. The focus was much worse upon release, but after my input another gasket was made, only for it to be wrong. Not sure if Simon gave the factory the wrong dimensions or the factory screwed it up. Thankfully my instructions were followed for the 4040 gasket. Another gasket is being made for the 3030.
I measured 250m less with a CSLNM1 3030 gasket, than using my own gasket. The very first L21B gasket performed worse than the C8+
Less corona and larger hotspot will throw further in this case.
Using the CSLNM1 my gasket as shown produces the longest range by a lot
