Noctigon 20mm copper triple XPG/XPE/XTE coming soon!

Yes the 115mm long light with the very compact switch and not high board and long reflector can be insanely cut down. Maybe 14.6-15mm spacer. With O-ring and protected batteries. But it’s something you have to really measure on exact light with everything put in. I don’t know how high my direct driver is going to be so I still have some reserve. I know I can fit a glass in front of the lens no problem due to enough space left.

The problem when cutting it down is how to remove the thread so you can make it flat for the o-rings on the inside of the head. Dremel it by hand out? If my dremel would dremel aluminum that is…

The spacer is hefty and copper, heatsink FTW.

Too bad they don’t sell the triple boards per 1 piece, who needs 2 pieces…

Anybody wants to sell 1 because they bought 2?
Guess not, coz of shipping prices :confused:

If I remember from descriptions S2 is 124 or 125mm long, yes you can cut that 24-25mm off if you have compact internals and low profile TIR optic. 18650 light can be made 10cm with a TIR.

I saw that picture DBC, I hope the top side of the copper spacer is the driver side.

That’s the cut-out for the driver, the top is filed flat and sanded smooth.

If the threads are far enough into the head to allow the pill to move forward to seat the TIR against either the lens or bezel, removing threads at the o-ring location is easy-peasy.

There's two guide pins clamped in the vise so the part can be turned and end up with a cut that's concentric with the OD. I do it that way for opening the ID of bezels, cutting a new step to locate drivers, that entire Mag pill was made from 1-3/8" (35mm) AL bar stock using that fixture on a drill press.

(yes, there's a 1/8" radius at the base of the pedestal & outer ring) :party:

How about one of these with the 3XP? https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/20003

Both the board and TIR need to be shaved down on the OD by around .045" (stock lens is something like 18.7mm), AND the head would end up way too long here too, so it can be shortened a bunch like the S2.

Sure but what is the use? Small battery, small capacity and power, small heat sinking, it will just overheat quickly. Even the single cell 18650s go warm when over 2A current. It will be hot when maxing out a triple. Isn’t it better to use just 1 emitter and drive it the same current? Cheaper for sure, easier to build. For tiny lights it will be better than putting there a triple.

Ordered, can’t wait :slight_smile: Been pushing this months ago, almost gave up to check again anymore, now they finally are selling them. Light still not built so I hope it will be worth it and the build will be better.

Convoy S3 pill with a P60 pill stuck on the back:

There's an AL 16mm star with the top layer filed off JB Welded into the top, a copper sleeve and a flat disc in the driver compartment, and a copper tube inserted and riveted to tie all the crazy layers together...

Tools to expand the tube, there's a chamfer on the top & bottom of the hole in the pill to lock the tube into place after it's riveted:

Riveted:

Rough cut with a hand file:

...and lapped & polished, ready to assemble:

Damn you do some awesome work!

I just filed the brass off so I have flat pill where the emitter normally stits, it’s nice to have more threads by combining pills for sure. Although I wonder why not copper instead of the alu board. Looks well in the end :slight_smile:

With a brass pill, a copper disc under the copper 3XP board would make, if anything, a very very tiny difference. And the AL star was already the right size to drop right in, I would have had to make another copper disc, and I don't have any copper here thick enough to do it without using 2 layers... in the end, AL might come out better given those limitations. Even crappy brass pills don't show much difference in performance than excellent copper pills of the same design, the surface area/mass of the pill is so much greater than the LED's thermal pad it's much less critical than what the MCPCB itself is made of.

For this first build with the 3XP I'm just using a plain boring 2.8A driver running the free version of luxdrv...

I have both clear & frosted optics, something I'm curious about is the dimples in the front face on the clear 10507, where the frosted 10508 is flat. I want to try polishing the frosting off the 10508 and compare the beams. Also, if using a glass lens in front of the optics, does it help to use a layer of clear silicone grease between them to eliminate the transition between the two?

Light passes through air far easier than any liquid, clear or otherwise.

Yes and no.. there's a loss when it leaves the TIR, and another when it enters the glass. Silicone grease would eliminate that and make it appear as a single unit.

edit: It's better without the lens, so that's one mystery that's now irrelevant. :p

Yes lens would add another light blocker, same as the grease will. The only thing the grease might do is change how the light refracts.

I don’t plan to use glass, just an o-ring for a seal.

Too bad the lenses are not more easily available. I bought mine with all the rest from IS with Nichias. But gosh the shipping prices outside US.

Yeah true, I use copper for the spacer since I have it and it’s thickest from the bars I have. I stack 4 and solder them. Provides mass to absorb the heat.

I could stack five all the way to 15.6mm (1mm less than the height of original reflector), that’s the max I can do. With a 1.55m MCPCB.
With Noctigon 1.75mm (if it really has that thickness) it would be 15.4mm.
All with protected Sanyo UR18650FM 69.5mm long battery.
I would get 14.4mm with 5 layers of copper, but the 4 layers are already giving it a weight.

And only 1 layer of 2.5-3mm is all that is needed to make it tighten with an O-ring in front of the Carclo 10507 lens.

Could possibly shorten the head by 12.0-12.5mm, almost half an inch.
But don’t have anything to remove the thread in the inside for o-rings :confused:

I’m not sure if shipping would be cheaper or not, but ledsupply.com also carries the Carclo 3up optics:

http://www.ledsupply.com/carclo-optics-3up.php

Thanks, I have it. Ledsupply has only $35 international shipping.
IS is fine as long as you fill the whole package, $6.8 is not cheap but not so bad. The cheapest you can get I think when shipping from US. It’s just regular airmail.

Well I was prepared to be disappointed by the TIR optics, but I like it! (the frosted 10508, not so much) The plain 10507 has a big hotspot with soft edges, but very little spill.

The frosted version is only good for lighting up an entire room in one go without having to worry about where the light is pointed - I'm sure somebody out there will say "wow, that's exactly what I've been looking for!' - but not me.

Ceiling-bounce test, 3XP Convoy S3 @2.8A vs. XML2 Convoy S3 @3.5A, the 3XP is MUCH brighter. And given the way triples in parallel affect the effective Vf, it should be able to maintain the rated current down to a lower input voltage than the single XML2 which will hit the Vf ceiling sooner.

p.s. I REALLY REALLY HATE the design of the S3, no removable head - everything has to be loaded through the front, then the pill tightened against the bezel by reaching all the way through the body from the tailcap end. Convoy S2 or TR-801 from now on for me, thanks...

I think the problem is the tir’s are meant for household (cant think of the right term) lighting, not torches….we just pinch the tech and hope it works, the frosted lense sounds perfect for one of my intended uses for these boards, namely making some crappy mr16 dropins far more acceptable, I’m a bit away from this as I’ve hit my paypal limit for this year lol, I’m busy jumping through the hoops necessary to get my paypal verified.

I do intend to fit one of these in my blf a8 with a stacked qlite, I think with some iS high cri xp-g2’s it’ll make a very pleasing upgrade.

Damn, glad I never bought an S3!
Glad I have this and made FastTech list it too.
Or you can get it from fancyflashlights but the tailcap silicone boot is too high, the FT version should be better. The surface is really great as the whole light is anti slippery.

What I’ve seen from all TIRs, is that they have big hot spot and no spill. At least the Carclo’s I have from IS and tiny 12mm TIR.

How do triples affect effective Vf?
XP-G2 should have low Vf where as XM-L2 got a little screwed up and the Vf is higher than XM-L or XP-G(G2).

How can the triple be brighter? Sure it may be more effective and the XP-G2 has lower Vf but still.

I want to see pics and measurements if possible :slight_smile:

xpg-2’s Vf is not only lower when compared to an XML-2 at the same current but because the current is divided by the 3 LEDs, it is EVEN lower (3A through triplr XPG has a lower Vf than 1 XPG at 3A). At 3A, each LED is getting on 1A and the Vf at 1A is very good for a linear driver light.

What I’m most surprised by is the fact that comfy noticed the 3xpg-2 at 2.8A is brighter than an xml-2 at 3.5A. I was doing some rough estimates from Match’s data and it didn’t seem like I would benefit much from a triple xpg-2 (besides the lower Vf) unless I was pushing greater than 3A, so I decided not to build a triple xpg-2. However, from what comfy is saying, I might just go ahead and build a triple xpg-2 after I finish another nichia219.

Direct Drive running ~7A on an AW IMR18350 Fireplace is 18’ away, mantle is 81.5” long, the light fixture on the ceiling is 8’

We know lower Vf (or higher voltage) will increase the current draw. My thinking is that since multiples in parallel draw a higher current from the same source in DD as compared to a single in DD, that if you regulate the current down, that should extend the runtime before the cell voltage vs. Vf starts to reduce the current.

For instance checking with a really low voltage, a single CR123, the 3XP draws 540mA. A single XML2 light with an identical driver only draws 420mA from the same CR123.

Convoy S2 is cheaper than the X-Power, and the pattern of knurling & grooves on the head would make it easier to hide the cut line when the head's shortened to fit the 3XP. And the TR-801 has a really slick pill design, I think it's better from a heat standpoint than any of the other little tube lights. TR-801 has about an extra 1/4" or more in the head/bezel that can be cut off when converting to the 3XP and ditching the glass lens (and cutting off the ridiculous 'strike bezel' BS on the front).