This is how I would rate the upgrade by looking at your graph.
Up to 1,5amp, no difference
1,5-2,5 minimal difference
2,5-3,0 some difference, about 10% at 3A - or 100 lumen gained compared to aluminium.
3,0-4,0 defiantly some gains. Especially when getting close to 4A. About 200 lumen gained compared to aluminium star @4A. Or 15% increase.
4-6, huge gains
1500+ lumens @ 5A. NICE!
But, gains are mostly when having high vf.
Can someone explain to me how real life gains would be when using a 4-5 amp driver and only 1 li-ion like a Panasonic NCR18650B Protected in combination with a linear driver… Would there actually be any gains at all?
Using one protected 18650 in combination with a boost driver, would there be any issues?
If using only one battery, I am assuming larger , low resistance, no protection would be helpful. But pushing 5A for some time would not be realistic even with one “high ouput” 26650, or??
And even if it does make that suggested current it would not stay there very long maybe a couple of minutes at best. A IMR cell would probably stand the best chance at it. Possibly 8 to 10 min judging by HKJ’s IMR graph.
excellent work Match, thanks!
Particularly this Vf graph is neccesary for a good mod! I was expecting the lumen results but i was a bit surprised from the Vf graph. Do you have any xm-l for comparison? THanks!
So it appears that even running multiple healthy parallel cells wouldn’t run very long at 5A. Guess one needs to consider getting the equipment needed to measure capacity and rate of discharge if they want to push an XML2 hard.
I would love to see the difference with sinkpad to aluminum. This difference was talked about elsewhere. It would really be good to KNOW what that difference would be. Remember the heat capacity of aluminum is about twice that of copper, even though the thermal conductivity is about half. Sinkpad to Aluminum is the practical construction technique, lets see how effective it would be.
Thanks Match!! This confirms what I've been seeing in the few XM-L2/SinkPAD builds I did and posted about. I ordered a Small Sun ZY-T08 exactly because of the 2 parallel battery configuration - perfect for a hot XM-L2/SinkPAD/Nanjg 3.85A or 4.2A setup.
Also, these results don't mean you won't see much of an advantage from single cell applications - even at lower measured amps, results are impressive over XML U3's on aluminum. I've also seen outstanding results with an XML U3 on a SinkPAD and having the same high Vf issue with that, so it's not so much an advantage of the XM-L2, it's the SinkPAD's advantage. For single cell applications, switching to lower resistance batteries directly results in higher amps, higher measured lumens/throw - I've done this on a few lights by testing with an AW IMR 2000 mah.
So, I'm seeing greater gains with a SinkPAD upgrade than upgrading to an XM-L2 emitter only, so, Match's results seem to confirm this. I'm not saying XM-L2's have no merit - they do with efficiency, and with equal bin, equal tint, they should do better than an XML, but unfortunately the best/brightest available XML emitter is a U3 1A/1B/1C, while the best/brightest XM-L2 is U2 1A/1C now, and I've only used XM-L2 U2 1C's and XM-L2 T6 3C's up til now.