P60 Copper Wrapping Measurements

Bringing this back from the dead, how for down the spring or up the reflector did the foil go? Any pictures to it wrapped before you put it into the light. Just got my first P60 and drop in and like it but want to make it even better.

Based on the other posts, the foil likely starts at the end of the taper, and goes down roughly .5 - .75” from that point.

You might want to take a look at the video in this post:

bose, I hope this picture helps to illustrate:

This is my L2 with an unknown drop-in gifted to me by mitro. The 40 guage copper strip is 18-20mm wide, cut from a roll I got from Hobby Lobby. As you can see from the photo, this width covers from just over the reflector curve down to slightly over the spring. The actual flat spot on the drop-in is about 16mm. Doesn't really matter because the actual contact area (the dark strip in the center on the drop-in) with the host is about 12mm. After much trial and error, I settled on the 18-20mm width as narrower widths tend to slip when pushing the drop-in into the host. I used the Ceramique as a kind of glue to hold everything in place. It's very thick and sticky, so only a small dab is required, plus it is after all thermal paste, so it should help or at least not hurt heat conduction of the copper.

Start with a few small dabs to hold the strip in place on the drop-in, then start tightly wrapping it around. I put another dab of ceramique in there about every two wraps. With 40 guage, 6-7 full wraps will be adequate, but the exact cut out is different for every light and takes some trial an error to get right. After finish the wrapping, I'll continue to twist it in the direction of the wrap until it is completely flat and very tight. Then peal back the last 1" or so, spread a thin layer of ceramique on it to hold it in place. Then twist again until it stays flat and in place. Be careful not to get the paste near the edges, as it will spread out and get everywhere.

When you push it down into the host it should be a verrry tight fit to assure contact and thermal conduction. Use a screwing motion, going in the direction of the wrap so it stays tight and in place. The wrapping above is nice and snug. The wrapping on my L2P is so perfect it takes all my strength to remove it from the host.

Hope this helps. Expect to have to wrap/re-wrap and cut the strip until you get the best fit.

Awesome work thanks for sharing.

I am looking to wrap your drop in so that I can get the best heat transfer and use it on Turbo for extended periods, lol.

The P60 drop-in is faulty by design, as far as heat transferral is concerned. Crikey, all those bloody drop-ins are designed very poorly!

Have you ever taken apart one of those? No offense, as I do know a lot of you probably have. That brass pill which screws into the aluminium reflector, well, to be honest - I couldn’t think of a design more flimsily. Subsequently, I’d add as much copper to the pill as only possible; press-fit, then add a thin line of solder, just to make sure.

Next comes the design itself: Heat, for that matter, is mostly drawn off by the wrapped aluminium reflector to the head of the torch. Which, in turn, is not the part where the heat actually builds up - that would be the junction point between the emitter star and the pill, or more comprehensively, the pill by itself.

Now, you’d still have to overcome that terribly bad barrier of threads between the pill and the reflector, to effectively draw off the excess heat.

Think about that, sometime. Standard LED P60s are awful to heatsink properly.

Oh, just to add one more thought - a thought, really, an idea, nothing proven by myself, so don’t club me to death if I should be wrong:

Copper is only as good as the alloy it will come as. Meaning: Pure (chemically pure!) copper = excellent, use it if you can get your hands on it!; industrial-grade-copper (a.k.a. “what-the-machine-shops-with-all-their-fancy-CNC-lathes-usually-have-piled-as-bar-stock”) = save your effort and take your commercially available aluminium bar stock, as it can be machined much more easily, and transfers heat at the same rate as a generic copper alloy.

please take this into consideration as well.

Oh, on a side note: Of course!!! I do use copper with a pill rather than aluminium - just for the sole factor that soldering copper to brass is SOO incredibly easy, compared to soldering aluminium to brass.

FWIW,

Simon

s.:

your best bet would be a conically shaped liner bushing, and both the pill and reflector re-worked on a lathe to match that conical shape of the bushing, then hand-lap, then press-fit everything together. Sounds like a lot of work? It surely is, at least for me. Angles of any kind I have always found terrible, be it on 3ds max, AutoCAD, Nemetschek Allplan CAD and even by hand.

As I understand it if you specify c101 when ordering a part at a machine shop then it will be made of 99.9% pure copper.

scaru, I’m looking for a source myself. Things aren’t as easy in continental Europe as they are in the US, or in the UK.
May not even legally hunt down mice on my attic or in the garden with an air rifle over here.

I'm pretty sure this company ships to europe.

oh my, intl’ shipping - I’d be horray about it, if the suspension parts for my 1967 Mercury hadn’t cost so much already!

ta, bookmarked for next month! :slight_smile:

I wonder what is the point in wrapping the reflector with foil. I tend to wrap the bottom 5 mm of the reflector and the base of the pill but the spring gets in the way. Sometimes I remove the spring as it doesn’t serve any purpose as far as I can tell.

Yeah, thanx for sharing BetweenRides!

the larger spring tightens the reflector to the pill i am pretty sure if u take it out and play with it :slight_smile:

I also got 50c with aluminum foil. I got about 43c with no Aluminum foil showing the foil does indeed help a good bit. Don’t see any benefit using copper. Also, I didn’t see your temp with no foil?

Keith

Ha! Great idea! How many wrappings did you have to do with aluminum? Wikipedia says that standard aluminum foil is 0.6 mils thick and heavy-duty is 0.9 mils thick so you'd have to wrap 3x-6x times the 3 mil thick copper. Also, the aluminum might be too thin and rip as you tried to force it into the body. Did you have this problem?

BTW, the OP lists the full temperature rise of both unjacketed and copper-jacketed versions in the graph. It looks like 44C 46C to me.

I’ve been using 24 ounce Monster cans as they are about twice as thick, often needing only 3 layers or less to get a tight fit. Also being stiffer due to thickness the pills outer spring dosen’t get in the way and can be left on.

I hope you have fun here, lensmanmark!

C110 copper is 99.9% pure. C101 copper is 99.99% pure. That 0.09% difference just about doubles the cost at an increase in thermal performance of about 5%. Hardly worth the added cost.

Tapered copper pill?

It was not made for the Surefire lights so the taper is slightly off, but, you get the idea.

I’ve wrapped with copper and aluminum, both work well and I can’t tell a difference. The most crucial part is the attachment of the Led to the board and/or the pill. After that the pill to the body seems a distant 2nd. I’m looking at a very small focal point of the Led of only a few square mm’s. The surface area of the outer pill to the body is much greater either metal is going to move more heat than can be transferred from the Led bottleneck. Of the two metals copper is much more malleable fitting with less fuss. Aluminum is just free from an old can and requires just a little more work. The exception is if I’m working a quad at 5.6 amps then I’m using copper, aluminum for everything else.