Sipik SK68

LED Flashlights – General Info 1 x AA / 1 x 14500 Flashlights
51

As a consultant, I have to say “it depends”. :slight_smile:

Unfortunately I forgot to ask which brightness bin it is. It holds draw for a short test at ~1.65A on a fresh charged Trustfire 14500. I don’t have any IMRs or other 14500s to see if it would go up with a better battery. No testing with AA cells of any type.

I don’t have measurement gear, but the output table based on voltage calcs out to something like 25% to 100% increase in lumens, most likely something in the 50-75% range over the XRE that came out - more if it is an R5.

http://flashlightwiki.com/Cree

However, many of the extra lumens are spread over a larger area of the projected die. So brighter depends on whether you mean more total light in the target area, or more intensity at center. Yes for the former, less so for the latter.

With a somewhat depleted battery, OL didn’t think it increased by much. Side by side on a very close wall, my XPG2 seems to be a little brighter than my P60 XML’s hot spot running @ ~2.1A. Pretty good to me. Also, the die image is a little smaller (and brighter) than my P60 XML aspheric. Another good finding, to me.

With the 3 mode, I get a nice wider focused beam on high and the lower power is perhaps similar to the brightness of a 1.5v battery drawing similar ~2.x watts.

The zoomed out mode is also cleaner, though mine still has a halo ring at the outside edge (probably the bare alum outer ring under the lens which sits a little higher than the white plastic compression ring).

The bezel and lens off makes a great mule - easily lights up 30 foot width and 50 foot depth (standing at the entry to the biggest space I have at home). Looking at it from the receiving end from 20’ with no reflector or aspheric I’m still seeing spots as I type this.

I wanted the mod because the driver seemed to be about right for where I wanted to run my first XPG2. LED and star changed, not driver. Plus I already have a FTT XML light that I like waiting for XML2s or brighter. Lucky for me Old Lumens got the wrong LEDs in and had them available.

Heat has been a non issue, especially for my runs on high (only 5 - 10 minutes at a time). Probably because OL said he was able to add a little copper in the hollow pill and added paste to help with heat sinking.

Very happy with the change and this will be well enough left alone, if I’m not grabbing a different light for a specific task. I’m not planning to run AAs in it except as emergency backup. It might suck for 1.5v or it might be OK for someone else.

52

I do not know about that one in particular, but I think two of mine have XP-G in them (I recall them being XP-G, but there’s a chance it’s XP-E, can’t remember for 100% sure and can’t get to them right now).

Edit: They are XP-E.

53

For flood purposes, an XM-L zoomie is going to be far better than a SK-68… and there are lots to choose from. The Ultrafire 838 is particularly wide and floody though. For zoom purposes, an XP-G is going to need bigger optics than a XR-E or XP-E in order to get the same spot size. I forget if it was this thread or elsewhere, but someone was complaining that their XP-G SK-68 was disappointing.

Maybe instead you should try putting an XP-G into a SK-98, which has bigger optics and is designed for XM-L + 18650 use. Or even better, since those tend to cook themselves and are still pretty wide when zoomed and are too short for modern batteries, the UF 838 I mentioned could be a good host for an XP-G mod.

54

The UF 838 is wonderful light. If you like zoomies and dont mind a bigger light then its great. Also like the SK68 it takes alkalines and lithiums. Wish I would have bought 10 of them on the wallbuys sale when they were $6. Definitely one of the top on my zoomie list along with the SK68 and the Small Sun ZY-C10. The UF 838 and the SK98 are super flooders but there is a lottery on them, you might get a hollow pill or might not.

55

TBH, I can’t recall which had more throw. I will have to check. I believe the XP-E had a bit better flood. There is a thread somewhere that has my lumen measurements; almost the same I think. The BBQBuy ones had less rings around the flood and zoom images.

Edit: changed to XP-E, now that I double-checked them. And the BBQBuy XP-E ones I have give a better throw than the UF XR-E ones.

56

There is also no such thing as an 800 lumen XP-G, or a 1600 lumen XM-L, or a 400 lumen XR-E, or a bunch of other claims commonly made by many of the torch vendors out there… it’s very common practice to flat-out lie about the specs.

The usual formula is to take the maximum rated emitter specs, approximately double it, and claim that the torch gets that many OTF (out-the-front) lumens. This number has very little correlation to the torch’s actual output.

Honest budget torch vendors are the exception, not the norm.

57

I got two “BBQbuy” batches from BestDeal777 on Amazon, and they had different optics. The second batch has a smaller spot and better throw, along with generally nicer quality overall. I’m not totally sure if they’re XR-E or XP-E, but the aspheric lens is slightly bigger on one batch and I think that accounts for the difference. (the lens bezel is thinner to allow room for bigger optics)

I bet it’d be even smaller/brighter if I used my UF-838’s lens on it though. I’ve used extra lenses on occasion to focus non-zoomie lights, but only for my own amusement and to see a larger projection of the emitter. Like, my XP-G2 is much easier to see that way.

If I can get the pieces to stay put on their own, I may try to get a picture of what that looks like.

58

I tried it, and I got pics. I can say that the XP-G2 w/ UF-838 lens makes a smaller and brighter spot than the SK-68 w/ XR-E or XP-E (not sure which I have), at least when the SK-68 is using a NiMH battery.
This was my kludged-together setup:

Here is what its new beam pattern looks like: (the darkened curve crossing the frame is a hair stuck inside my camera)

… and the hotspot up close with a shorter exposure. It’s really hard to focus it cleanly though, and the spot pattern looks darker in person.

Now, comparison shots… these were automatic everything on a snapshot camera, so I apologize for the poor quality:
SK-68 on Energizer “recharge” NiMH batteries vs XP-G2 at 1.4A Li-Ion:

SK-68 on Sanyo 840mAh Li-Ion batteries vs XP-G2 at 1.4A Li-Ion:

So, the SK-68 on Li-Ion seems nearly as bright in this test, but on NiMH it’s significantly dimmer.

59

I have several original single-mode Sipik SK68’s, and still my favourite EDC lights.
But i have been looking to find a 3-mode or 5-mode Driver to swap into them. ( preferably without the flashy, Stroby, Seizure-inducing blinky modes. :~ ) Anyone know of a good place to get the 15 mm ( 0.59 inch) drivers ?

60

Sorry for taking so long to reply.
The clickie is OK. No problems and the sofr touch to change modes works fine.

61

the SK68 is my favourite giveaway torch. Affordable, decent machining and ano; and like an old armour, it will run on mostly everything - alkaline, Li-FeS2, (LSD-) NiMH, 1400 Li-Ion even. Non-flashaholics are quite enthralled by its brightness, usually (admittedly, those people often have the misconception that the world of science hasn’t seen much progress after Thomas Alva Edison’s invention of the incandescent light bulb), and love the focusable beam.

62

Yeah, er, there are a lot of different vendors selling this item at a wide range of prices. Amazon tends to randomly choose a vendor each day and make them the default for the product, but you can see all of the others too.

Look at “More Buying Choices” and there should be a link which says something like “59 used & new from $4.50”. There, you can see all the vendors and their prices and their customer ratings. The one who currently has it for $4.50 has a score of 83% with 30 total reviews. The vendor I got mine from was BestDeal777, who currently has a 94% rating based on 9659 reviews, which seems a lot more reliable. They charge $5.89 though, instead of $4.50. And I know that they don’t always ship out the best-quality version of this light.

Anyway, just wanted to point out that Amazon’s listing is more complex than it might look at first.

63

I like to use camelcamelcamel.com. You can set a price for an item and get an alert when it drops below that price. They also have graphs of historic price data. It’s amazing how widely and how often prices change.

64

friends what about this 3 mode?

http://www.everbuying.com/SIPIK-SK68-Cree-Q3-3W-80-Lumens-AA-Zooming-LED-Flashlight-with-Clip-Black-p-26324.html

can be really 3 mode sipik?

65

… if you’re lucky. It’s quite difficult to get a reliable source of 3-mode SK-68 lights with the slightly wider lens, a full set of O-rings, the ability to tailstand, a working boost circuit, and otherwise no significant flaws. Most of them are missing at least a couple features.

66

How much are they each if you sell them ?

67

You can tell if the boost circuit is working because it’ll be fairly bright on a normal AA battery (alkaline or Eneloop)… like, around 140 or 160 lumens. Without the boost, it’s pretty dim. IIRC, it should draw somewhere around 2A from a regular AA battery.

As for O-rings… let’s see. Four total, I think. Around the tail cap, around the outside of the zoomie part to seal the bezel, inside the bezel under the lens, inside the zoom mechanism, … I think that’s all. But it doesn’t matter all that much, since it’s not really going to be waterproof anyway. The one inside the zoom mechanism makes the most obvious difference, making the zoom feel more smooth and solid.

The lenses seem to come in at least two different sizes, with one throwing a brighter, narrower beam than the other.

68

That means we have sk68 clones from different batches.

69

[quote=DenBarrettSAR]
How much are they each if you sell them

[quote=cat eyes]

Hoping I’m not out of line here, been watching the market on these for quite a while.

Right now, the cheapest 3-mode Q5 is from a ebay seller for $6.29 shipped.

YMMV with ebay

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CREE-Q5-LED-300-Lumens-Zoom-Torch-Flashlight-Lamp-Light-/160831844723?pt=US_Flashlights&hash=item2572533173

70

I have one quesiton regarding SK68’s - has anyone found remote pressure switch that fits this light?
Or if you havent, which pressure switches from other lights have you been able to “port” to SK68?